


The End of the Beginning

by E_J_Frost



Series: Lords of Furya [3]
Category: Pitch Black - Fandom, The Chronicles of Riddick (2004), The Chronicles of Riddick Series
Genre: Angst, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Love, M/M, Multi, Past Abuse, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-17
Updated: 2016-02-20
Packaged: 2018-05-21 06:42:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 6
Words: 40,797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6041979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/E_J_Frost/pseuds/E_J_Frost
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three years after the events of "Chronicles of Riddick," Riddick has established a colony on Furya with the Necromongers who accompanied him from the Armada. He's overcome all challenges to his rulership and built a family with his Necromonger concubine, Liaden, and a returned Furyan, Hardy. But can he overcome a challenge that strikes at the root of his family?</p><p>Legal disclaimer: The characters who appear in "Pitch Black" and “The Chronicles of Riddick” belong to Universal Studios and their other various copyright owners. I make no claim on them and do not intend to profit from the use of them in this work of fiction. All other characters and settings are mine; kindly seek my permission if you plan to use them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story came as a surprise to me. I thought I'd finished with Riddick and Liaden after finally completing "Lords of Furya." But Riddick had more to say. 
> 
> I hope this story isn't too confusing for anyone who hasn't read "Lords of Furya." I've tried to build in enough back-story that someone coming to this fresh will understand what's going on, without a lot of repetition for those readers who have read the previous two novels.
> 
> Enjoy!

There are days when I feel like the luckiest fuck alive. Then there are days like today.

Today, everyone wants a piece of me. Vaako’s pullin’ me away before I even finish breakfast to deal with a discipline problem with the legionnaires. Then Elkie’s dragging me off to the other side of the island to help her with the defenses around the original Furyans’ caves. Putting up the rest of the shock wall takes less than an hour, but she won’t let me go. First it’s a swim, then it’s lunch, then it’s a tour of the upper cave system so I can see all the improvements she’s made. Mostly she doesn’t want me to leave ‘cause she’s miserable doin’ the job I didn’t want: Furyor. Seein’ how Shirah alternately ignores Elkie and criticizes her every move, makes me even happier that I dodged that particular bullet.

I’m back at Zibon by late afternoon and figure I’m in time to have tea with Liaden and play with Jack before dinner. But when I reach Li’s solarium, it’s empty. I can hear her thoughts faintly, so she’s somewhere in the Hab. I listen. Smile at the sweet little shiver that runs down my spine. I love listening to her thoughts. No matter what she’s thinking, her mind’s more soothin’ than a dark room. I’ve spent days just listening to her think. I still don’t understand half of what she’s thinking, but I like listening.

Right now she’s thinking of ways to distract our toddler from a screaming tantrum. Jack’s a Furyan in every way, including her temper. Hardy distracts Jack the best of the three of us, but he’s been gone for two days, hunting. Probably why Jack’s pitchin’ a fit. Hardy may not be Jack’s daddy biologically – although Liaden’s convinced that Hardy’s related to me somehow – but Jack loves Hardy like he is. She doesn’t like him being gone for so long.

No more’n Li or I do.

I pick up the portable lens that hangs on a strap off my belt, tune it to the frequency of Li’s locator, and wait while it triangulates. She’s in her garden, which is surprising this time of day, when she’d usually be in our quarters getting ready for our baths. Jack’s tantrum must have delayed her.

I head to the central stairs and take them two at a time, to rescue my wife from our daughter.

Jack’s a puddle of soft brown curls and furious tears when I find them near the river that winds through Li’s garden. Li’s trying to distract our daughter with a toy, but Jack just keeps reaching towards the nettles where the hellhounds have their lair. The hellhound alpha, Tihamner, grows from deep in the nettles every time Jack stretches out her hands, which provokes more furious tears.

“New pup must be nursin’,” I say to Liaden as I near.

She looks up and brushes some strands of her black-silk hair out of her eyes. She’s pink-cheeked and glowing, but that’s not from dealing with our toddler. She glowed through her last pregnancy, too. My beautiful wife.

“Or trying to sleep, Xia forbid,” Li says. She puts the toy down on the grass in front of Jack, rises and comes to me. The way she always does. Straight into my arms. Straight into my heart. She fuckin’ undoes me.

I hug her tight. Brush those strands of hair back from her face before I kiss her. While I’m tasting the sweet mint of Li’s mouth, something barrels into my leg, latches on to my pants and tries to climb my thigh.

“Daddy!” Jack howls.

“Baby, you been good for Mama?” I break our kiss to look down at our daughter.

She releases my leg, plops down onto her diapered butt and begins rubbing her eyes. She hasn’t been good and she knows it. There’ll be more tears in a second.

“Tired baby,” I say to Li.

“Very tired baby. She wouldn’t take her nap without a story from TooDaddy. She’s been impossible all afternoon.”

“Jack,” I say gently, because my voice is so deep that it sometimes scares her, even when I’m not trying to. “If I read you a story, can you be a good girl and take a nap?”

“TooDaddy story,” Jack says with a sniffle.

“TooDaddy’s still in the jungle findin’ us dinner. How ‘bout we all have a bath and I’ll read you a story and then you take a nap in our bed?”

“Big bed,” Jack agrees.

Li rolls her eyes. She doesn’t like to encourage Jack sleeping in our bed under any circumstances. I understand why. Our sleeping arrangements are complicated enough without the addition of a toddler. But my attitude towards all rules is that they’re meant to be broken. Even Li’s.

“C’mon then, big girl.” I scoop her up. Jack’s tall for her age, but it’s all stick-thin arms and legs. She barely weighs anything. She takes after Li in that way, who’s so slender she borders on skinny. But they’re both stronger than they look, and when Jack wraps her arms around my neck, she nearly chokes me.

“Easy, Jack,” I tell her. She loosens her hold a little and puts her curly brown head down on my shoulder. She really is tired. She’d usually be trying to climb up onto my shoulders.

I hold my free hand out to Li and when she takes it, draw her close to my side. Together, we walk through her garden. It’s all violets, russets and golds now, as the summer flowers give way to fall. Li’s garden is gorgeous at any time of year, but I like fall best. I can see all the colors, even with my shine job, and I know she’s chosen a lot of the plants just for that reason. Makes me feel like part of this thing she loves so much.

Jack’s asleep by the time we reach our quarters. She doesn’t wake even when Li lifts her off my shoulder, so she ends up her crib rather than in our bed. Sorry, kid.

I’m less sorry when things get frisky in the bath. Jack’s naps rarely coincide with bath-time, so this is the first time in months that I’ve been able to follow through where our nakedness and Li’s soft touches should always lead. I consider options for a moment while I hold Li in my lap and kiss her deep. I’ve got nothing against doing it in the tub. But I like the bed better. More room to maneuver, and no matter what anyone says, water’s not a lubricant.

I don’t bother to dry either of us off when I pick her up and carry her to our bed. Sheets’ll dry us some and we’re just going to get sweaty anyway, so a little water more or less is nothing.

I bring Li first, thrusting slowly into her as she lies beneath me, her fingernails cutting into my shoulders, heels beating against the backs of my thighs. Despite the fact I outweigh her by fifty kilos, she loves my weight on her, so I take her in tried-and-true missionary position first, before we go for something more exotic.

Li’s got no real refractory period – most women don’t – but she likes to doze for a few minutes after her climax. I let her, kissing her and rolling my hips to keep us both in the mood, while I think about our next go-round.

I only get Li one-on-one like this once a month or so, when Hardy goes off hunting overnight. When he’s with us, I try to include him in whatever we’re doing. Over the last few months, that’s been real inclusive, a true threesome. I’m happier being the filling in the sandwich than Hardy is, but even when we’re not doing that, I need to pick a position where he can touch Li and she can touch him. Limits the options.

I’ve got no limitations today, except what Li can take. An’ she can take a lot, even four months pregnant. Her belly’s just started to swell, so I don’t have to worry about that yet. I’ve started feeling that plushness inside her that I felt the last time – and liked so much I seriously considered getting her pregnant again immediately despite the fact she didn’t really enjoy pregnancy – but the baby’s not big enough yet to apply any of the pressure on her cervix that gave us so much trouble at the end. So the field’s pretty much wide open.

“How long you think Jack’ll be down?” I ask her when she begins kissing me back, which tells me she’s ready to go again.

“Maybe a half-hour, but then Nazya’s going to give her a bath, so we have at least an hour. What did you have in mind, my love?”

“Lemme show you.” I withdraw from her, leaving her in a glorious abandoned sprawl across the black sheets. I love it when Li looks this way. Fucked out of all her usual composure and reserve. Like nothin’ in the universe matters to her except me coming back and finishing what we’ve started.

I only leave her for a minute, to pull a couple of soft silk ties out of a drawer under the bed. When I return to her, she’s holding out her wrists, which I tie together. Then I pull her down to the end of the bed.

Our bed’s high by design. Pretty much the exact height of my hips. That the height prevents even our tall toddler from climbing up onto the bed wasn’t part of the design, but is a big fucking bonus.

I tie Li’s wrists to one of the bottom bedposts, then draw her at an angle across the bed, until her arms are stretched over her head and her hips are at the edge. I stand against the bed and stroke her legs up until her heels rest on my shoulders. Then I take her ankles and gently cross her legs in front of me, before pulling her hips back to mine and guiding myself into her.

She throws her head back and keens with pleasure. It’s a good position. With her legs crossed she feels extra-tight, particularly at her entrance where she’s squeezing the base of my shaft like a fist. I thrust lazily, enjoying that tightness, and the way Li writhes. I wrap my arm around her knees to keep her legs crossed tight against my chest, cup her hips with my other hand, and accelerate into our rhythm. It’ll bring us pretty quickly. After three years together, we know exactly what excites each other and when. And right now, looking down into Li’s storm-grey eyes, watching them glaze with the pleasure I’m giving her, seeing her twist against the bindings, watching the tiny hairs on her body rise and her pale gold skin pearl with sweat, and feeling her clamp around me as I plunge so deep into that tight, tight heat, excites me like nothing else. I make sure she goes first, her body bucking uncontrollably, her head whipping from side to side in the frame of her captured arms. But I’m only a second behind her, driving all the way to her core and pumping, pumping, pumping myself into her. Emptying my heart and soul and balls into her. Fuck, nothin’ feels better than this. Necros got it all wrong. That shiny hole in the universe ain’t transcendent. This is.

I uncross her legs and fold them down on either side of me so I can lean over her, kiss her hot cheeks and mouth, whisper to her through the aftershocks, which last a long time for both of us.

“Love you, wife,” I tell her. Took me a long time to say those words to her. Now I say ‘em as often as I can without soundin’ like a pussy. Those words mean so much to Li.

“And I, you, husband,” she murmurs. Her eyelids flutter. Her body’s trying to close them in bliss, but she fights it, lookin’ up at me, ‘cause she knows I want to see her eyes. See all the love there.

“I ain’t complainin’,” I tell her. “But sometimes I like it when it’s just you an’ me.”

“As do I. Being able to focus on you is it’s own pleasure.”

“Also like it when no one’s interruptin’ us.”

She chuckles. We try to make time to be together every day, but with the demands on me, and her, and Hardy, from all directions, including our demanding kid, we don’t always succeed. Add the morning sickness that Li’s been suffering into the mix, an’ it can tough to find a time we’re all free and in the mood, much less time to play like we just did.

“When Hardy gets back, could we do that again?” she asks.

“Position’s all wrong, sweetheart. Basic physics.”

“You could tie me up, though,” she whispers. She loses the battle against her bliss and her eyes slide closed. I kiss her eyelids to let her know I don’t mind.

“Yeah, I could do that. You want a little nap after I untie you?” I ask. Pregnancy didn’t fatigue her too much until her third trimester last time, but I’ve noticed her sleepin’ more this month, so she might appreciate a rest before dinner. Pretty sure tonight’s one of her dancin’ nights with the girls, too.

“Yes, please.” She lifts her wrists as I untie them. So she doesn’t have to move out from under me, I pick her up and lay her the right way across the bed, with her head on a pillow. I know she weighs more than Jack, objectively, but she doesn’t feel like it, she’s so light in my arms.

I stretch out next to her, wait until she slides a towel between her legs and takes a drink of water before I settle her on my shoulder. I’m not tired, but she’ll sleep better if I’m holding her, and that’s no hardship. She shifts easily into one of our usual sleeping positions, with her arm across my chest and her thigh across mine. Her belly presses lightly against my side and I stroke it with my free hand. There’s nothing to feel yet except Li’s warm, satin skin. It’ll be another month or two before we can feel the baby moving inside her. But I’m looking forward to that. Li was happiest in her last pregnancy once she could feel the baby moving and it became a baby in her mind, rather than a discomfort and an inconvenience.

“I’m still not crazy about Abithar,” she says sleepily, referring to the front-runner in the Baby Name Game we’ve been playin’. “I can’t imagine calling him ‘Abi.’”

I didn’t name Jack until a few hours after she was born, even though I knew what I wanted to call her from the moment she was conceived. It drove Li, who likes everything to be planned months if not years in advance, completely nuts. I’m plannin’ on doing the same thing this time – a little craziness is good for Li. Hardy an’ I agreed that we’d name him after Li’s father, Drayzon, pretty much as soon as she told us she was pregnant. But we haven’t told her that. Instead, we’ve come up with the ugliest names we can think of. It’s good for her, honest.

“Told you we should just call him Tiger.”

She hates Tiger, almost as much as she hates Abithar. “Do you really not like Tomas?”

“Nope.” Actually, Tomas is a fine name, but part of the game is for me and Hardy to pretend to hate everything she comes up with.

“What about your clan name, Branthon?”

“Only if you want him to get teased by all the other Furyan kids.”

Li huffs, but she’s too sleepy to really argue. I smile up at the ceiling, where Jarone, our resident painter, has done one of his colourful, abstract masterpieces, and listen to her thoughts as they stretch and fuzz towards sleep.

Hardy’s back for dinner, which we all have together in the galley. He’s caught four wild Antyons, which is good news on several levels. The big insectoid predators are such a favorite food that in the year after we established Zibon, we hunted them nearly to extinction. We created two farms on islands off-shore, but farmed meat ain’t as good as wild. So having wild Antyon meat back on the menu is somethin’ to look forward to. And, as Li predicted, killing all the Antyons fucked up Furya’s natural ecosystem, so we had an explosion of their main prey the next spring, and then a hideous die-off over the winter as the lannias starved. We couldn’t eat ‘em fast enough and even Chef finally balked at having to find new ways to cook ‘em. To fix things, we’ve spent nearly a year re-establishing four wild prides on the mainland. Antyons take six months to reach maturity, so if Hardy’s found four mature Antyons that weren’t taking care of young, that means the prides are gettin’ really established.

Chef’s put the Antyon in a hot salad with a spicy dressing, oily fried tuber and some of the greens Li grows. She thinks I don’t know their names – calhalla’s the shaggy leaf that tastes like pepper; dashu’s purple and curly; kertels are the long spikes with the musky roots Chef uses to flavor pretty much everything. I’ve listened to Li’s thoughts for so long that I know not just the names of everything she grows, but also how she grows them.

I’m listening to her thoughts now, which are flitting back and forth between the plate of salad she’s preparing for me and motherly concern that Jack is going to choke on the chunks of Antyon Hardy’s feeding her. I’m not worried about Jack. She’s a little carnivore, just like every Furyan, and she knows to chew her meat. Probably should be more worried about Hardy, who ain’t gonna get any Antyon at the rate it’s disappearing down Jack’s gullet. He tried to eat a piece a minute ago while Jack was chewing and she snatched it off his fork, earning a rebuke from Li and chuckles from the rest of the table.

I know we indulge the fuck out of Jack, outta all the kids. Probably setting ourselves up for a generation of misery. I know that’s what Li thinks. But each kid feels like a miracle with more’n half of the colony permanently sterile, despite the Healers’ best efforts.

Li sets the plate in front of me, as prettily arranged as any of her flowerbeds, and offers me a forkful. I finally broke Li outta concubine mold, but still I love having her feed me. Watching her prepare my food so carefully, then feed it to me forkful by forkful – that never gets old. Only trick is making sure she eats, too. She’s not nearly as good about caring for herself as she is caring for others.

But Chef’s got her number, and he loves her almost as much as I do. There’s already a basket of the white protein buns she stomachs most easily when she’s pregnant sitting beside her plate. Chef’ll bring out dishes especially for her throughout the meal. I may have to remind her to eat now and then, but she’ll never go hungry as long as Chef’s in the kitchen.

Another course arrives while Li’s feeding me the last of the Antyon salad. A creamy white soup garnished with the bright red ray eggs that wash up like bloody foam on the beach below the Hab. I take a breather while Li has some Antyon and a bun. Once she’s eating, I offer to take Jack off Hardy’s hands. He gives me a look that’s hard to read before he shakes his head.

Life’d be easier if I could see inside Hardy’s head the way I can see inside Li’s.

I wait until Jack’s chewing before I lean across Li’s back and say to Hardy, “What’s wrong with you?”

“Nothing,” he says, but he watches Jack eat instead of meeting my eyes. “Anything happen while I was away?”

“Two new arrivals. Still in quarantine but I’ve gotta meet with them tomorrow so you might as well suffer through that with me. Got the rest of the shock wall up around Shirah’s caves. Elkie’s just as miserable as she was last time she we saw her. And Jack’s got a new word.”

Li groans around the bite she’s chewing.

“Fuck, TooDaddy!” Jack chirrups, on cue.

“Uh—” Hardy rubs his hand over his mouth.

“Vaako taught it to her.”

On my far side, Vaako chokes on his salad. “Don’t you dare blame it on me. I slipped once in front of her. Once. You’ve said it every day since she was born.”

“I use it as an adjective. She’s usin’ it as a verb, just like Uncle Vaako did.”

Vaako shakes his head in disgust. Hardy chuckles.

“How ‘bout you? What’re the prides lookin’ like? And how’d the new girl do?” I nod at her, a dark-haired, dark-eyed girl a few years younger than Li. She’s sitting with our painter, Jarone, a couple other returned Furyans, and some Necros, a few tables away. She’s pretty, when she ain’t wearin’ the sour look that’s on her face now. Like nothin’ can please her. She’s Furyan by descent – the daughter of two Furyans who escaped before the Necro holocaust – not by birth. Like Hardy, who was born on Gallin. It don’t make any difference to me, personally, but the original Furyans draw the line there, so the girl wasn’t welcome in Shirah’s corner of the island and ended up with us. She only showed up about three weeks ago and ain’t fittin’ in anywhere yet. She said she knew how to hunt, so when Hardy’s usual hunting partner, Leto, got laid up with a broken leg, I asked him to take her with him.

Hardy glances at the girl, then away. He bounces Jack on his knee and kisses her forehead. “She’s not as good as Jack’ll be.”

“Jack good girl,” Jack announces.

“Daddy’s best girl,” Hardy agrees. “Were you good while I was hunting? You take your nap without a story?”

Jack stuffs a sauce-sticky fist into her mouth. My baby’s got tells just like her mother, and that one’s toddler-sized guilt.

“She did yesterday, our excellent girl,” Li says. “Today was a struggle.”

“That’s okay,” Hardy says, stroking Jack’s dark-caramel curls and gently removing her fist from her mouth so he can feed her another piece of Antyon. “Nobody’s perfect, are they, Jack?”

“Nobuddy perfec’,” Jack agrees before she chomps the meat.

“Antyons’re coming back fast,” Hardy continues. “The pride near the Stelae’s split into three groups. I counted thirty juveniles. Saw a dozen loners as well.”

“That’s a fuck of a lot faster than they reproduce on the islands.”

“Fuck lot,” Jack parrots.

Vaako chortles. “Was that an adjective?”

“Riddick—” Li begins.

“Sorry. Guess I’ll have to watch that.” Although I really couldn’t care less if Jack grows up swearing like a trooper. She’s just imitating what the adults around her do. That’s how kids learn. We didn’t bring a bunch of bureaucrats to Furya; we brought soldiers, and soldiers swear. If she’s gonna lead them some day, she better be able to swear with the best of ‘em.

When the Antyon runs out, Hardy tries to feed Jack some salad greens, to my baby’s strong objection. “No, TooDaddy, stinky!”

Li laughs, sweet and low. She scoops a couple of dashu leaves onto a plate and sets them in front of Hardy. “The calhalla’s too strong a taste for her. Try this.”

Jack grabs the leaves and stuffs them in her mouth before Hardy even has a chance to put fork to plate.

“Jack, mind your manners or you won’t be allowed to sit at the big table with us,” Li says. Her tone’s stern, and that’s all I’ve ever heard her be with Jack. She never yells at Jack. Certainly never hits her. Li’s teachin’ our baby how to behave through a system of rewards. Anythin’ Jack might like to do, like eat at the table with us, is a reward. If Jack behaves well, she gets the reward. If she don’t, the reward gets taken away. It ain’t a perfect system and Jack’s still got a temper, but I’ve never seen a kid respond as well to anythin’. Certainly better than the bewildering set of rules and punishments I had as a kid. They didn’t teach me nothin’ except to distrust adults. That ain’t what Jack’s learnin’. Jack worships Li. Same as Hardy and me do.

“Yeth, Mama,” Jack lisps around the mouthful of purple leaves, immediately contrite.

“Say sorry,” Hardy tells Jack.

“Sorry, Mama,” Jack says.

“Good girl.” He gives Jack another kiss on the forehead. “Whenever you do something wrong, you should say you’re sorry.”

He’s talking to Jack, but his eyes are on Li, who’s ladling out soup for everyone and doesn’t notice.

I almost ask him what he’s sorry for.


	2. Chapter 2

I was right about it being a dancing night for Li, which means that Hardy and me pull bed-time duty. Since Li’s not around to object, we chicken out and settle Jack in our bed, cuddled up in her own blankie so it’ll be easy to move her after she falls asleep. She demands three stories from Hardy to make up for him missing her nap two days running, and manages to put off bed-time for so long that she’s only just fallen asleep when the lens beside the bed blinks for curfew.

I ease out of the bed. Jack snuffles and sticks her thumb in her mouth, but doesn’t wake, which is a lucky break ‘cause she’s hell to get back to sleep. If nothin’ disturbs her though, she’ll go down for ten or eleven hours at a stretch. My baby’s a good sleeper.

Hardy rolls his eyes in relief.

“I’ll go get Li,” I whisper. Hardy nods and puts his head back down on the pillow beside Jack. Closes his eyes. Looks like the hunting wore him out. Don’t bode well for play-time tonight. Figures.

After pulling on a pair of boots, I head out of the Hab and into Eden. What started as Liaden’s garden, two hundred acres of flowers, fruit trees and a handful of crops, now stretches for fifteen miles. There are endless fields where we grow over a hundred different crops, farmsteads where we’re raising meat animals and poultry from a dozen worlds. We produce enough each year to feed every man, woman and child in Zibon three times over, so in the caldera of the extinct volcano, whose lava field makes Eden’s soil so rich, we’ve built a space tether. Every month, a deep space Cycler docks there to take our surplus off to other inhabited worlds.

The Air Elemental, Aereon, told me when I founded the colony that what I did on Furya would affect the whole sector. What I didn’t realize was she meant we’d be feeding it.

It takes me most of a day to walk the length of Eden and back. Li and I do it together about once a month. Fortunately, my destination tonight’s less than a five-minute walk through the stubbled fields. From the Hab, it’s a glimmering emerald. Up close, it’s a fabric pavilion, fifteen meters high, floored with soft grass. Light from a dozen lenses mounted on the metal supports reflects off the pavilion’s jade lining, and the rainbow dresses of a hundred women. They gather every couple of nights to dance, drink, gossip and do whatever else women do when they’re together. Mostly giggle, if Li’s memories are anything to go by.

One of the giggliest, and one of Li’s best friends, Gvenne, is sitting on a bench, drinking Cark and looking out into the field as I approach. Gvenne nudges Li, who is sitting with her back to me. Li glances over her shoulder; she smiles brilliantly when she sees me. Then she rises and grabs the hands of a girl standing nearby and drags her out of the pavilion to meet me.

I know what Li’s going to tell me before she opens her mouth. I see it shining in her mind.

“Zetty’s pregnant,” she says.

I hold my arms out to my former concubine and give her a hug when she comes to me. There’s never been any more than this between me and Zet. She’s always reminded me of the kid sister I didn’t have. And with her head of gold-touched brown curls, dark eyes and Furyan tan, she could be Jack’s older sister.

Which makes it a little weird that it’s my baby in her belly.

Once Zet steps back, I put my arm around Li’s shoulders. Li knows I’m the biological father. She encouraged me to donate, not just to Zet but to any of the hundred plus women who are fertile themselves but whose partners ain’t. Zet’s the first who’s conceived.

“Couple weeks?” I ask Zetty.

“Two,” she gives me a stunning smile. I smile back at her. Nice to see her so happy.

“Don’t get like Liaden and start howlin’ at the moon just ‘cause you’re totin’ around a Furyan.”

Li rolls her eyes. “I never howl.”

I lean in and whisper in her ear. “Pretty sure you I heard you howlin’ earlier when I had you tied to the bed.”

“Your advancing age must be affecting your hearing, my love,” Li retorts, referring to the fact that it’s my birthday next month and that I’m a decade older than her. I give her a squeeze. I love that she can hold her own when I tease her.

“You ready to go?” I ask her.

She glances back at the pavilion, which is beginning to empty, women drifting back towards Zibon in groups of two and three. A few men have come to meet their companions and wives – that’s a trend Li and me started when we got married – there have been over fifty weddings in the years since. But most of the women walk back to the Hab on their own.

I’m glad to see Zetty’s not one of them. Her husband Tykkas has arrived while we’ve been talking and is waiting a respectful distance away.

Li lifts her face to me and nods. “’Rea’s still here. She can shut everything down.”

I offer Li my arm, which she takes. After I congratulate Zetty again, and clap Tykkas on the shoulder, I guide Li away from the pavilion and through the fields to the long boardwalk that runs beside the river.

She leans her head against my shoulder and I listen to her thoughts, which blend into the musical burble of the river as we walk. She’s thinkin’ about a couple of different things, all of them happy, and humming a tune I haven’t heard before in the back of her head. Somethin’ she’s probably learning to teach Jack. She sings in her head a lot, and I like listenin’ to it almost as much as I like hearin’ her sing out loud.

“You happy for Zetty?” I ask her. I can tell she is. I don’t really have to ask. But I want to talk with her about it, and it’s a way to open the conversation.

“Delighted,” she says. “Zetty wants a baby so much. She was heart-broken when Tykkas’s reversal wasn’t successful.”

I’m glad I could help relieve that heart-ache, but it’s still a little weird to think of Zetty carrying my baby. “Doesn’t bother her that it ain’t Tykkas’s?”

“Mmm, I don’t think so. Honestly, I think she’s just as happy that it’s yours. You know she adores you.”

“Like a big brother. Not sure I’d want my brother’s baby.”

“Incest is best,” Li quips. I elbow her and she giggles. “In all seriousness, my love, I don’t think she’s thinking of the baby as yours. It’s hers, and Tykkas’s.”

I nod. That’s probably the right way to think about it. I may have contributed an essential ingredient, but Zetty and Tykkas are bakin’ the cake.

“You still all right with it?”

“More than all right. I’m very proud of you, my love. It’s a kind thing you’ve done.”

“Wasn’t anythin’.” And it wasn’t. Couple of quick tugs and makin’ sure I aimed into the cup.

“It’s a very big thing to Zetty.”

“Mmm.” I turn my face into her hair, enjoy the soft silk of it, and the wonderful scent of my wife. She’s not wearing any perfume tonight. It’s just her. Fresh-cut grass; the tang of the sea; floral, female musk. I stop her, catch her up against me and kiss her deep.

When I let her up for air, she drops back on her heels and smiles up at me. “My love?”

“Like the way you smell tonight.”

“Sweaty? The dancing was vigorous.”

“The way my wife’s supposed to smell. You know you’re the only woman who’s ever smelled right to me.”

She shapes my cheek with her palm. “What do other women smell like?”

“Different things, but none of ‘em right. I smelled you an’ somethin’ clicked in my head. That’s the way a woman should smell. Even when you stink of sweat, you still smell right to me.”

“I never stink of sweat,” she says huffily.

I lean in and take another sniff. “Weeeeell.”

She lunges and bites me playfully under the chin, on a scar she knows ain’t sensitive.

Chuckling, I unlatch her and stroke her head onto my shoulder so we can walk together back into the Hab.

 

Li and me stand at the bottom of our bed, our arms around each other, lookin’ at the rest of our family. Jack’s wriggled out of her blankie and up onto Hardy’s chest. He’s rolled onto his back, still dressed in the leather vest and pants he wore to dinner. He’s got his arm wrapped ‘round Jack so she’s secure. When Jack was a baby, we slept that way with her a lot. It’s cute to see them sleepin’ that way again.

“Should I see if there’s a guest room free?” Li whispers to me. “I hate to disturb them.”

I shake my head. I know there ain’t. That’s one of the things I gotta talk with the new arrivals about tomorrow. We don’t got anywhere to put ‘em.

I kiss Li’s temple, then move to the bed. I drape the soft little blankie around Jack and roll her carefully off Hardy’s chest. He grumbles when her weight lifts off him, and opens an eye. When he sees that I’ve got our daughter, he shuts it again and rolls onto the side he usually sleeps on.

I settle Jack into her crib. Li leans over me and tucks Jack’s favorite toy, a stuffed lizard, next to her. We watch as Jack scrabbles around in the blankets without really waking up. She finds the lizard, pulls it to her chest and stuffs the well-chewed tail into her mouth. Li glances at me and we share a grin.

Back in our bedroom, we stop next to the bed and watch Hardy sleep for a moment. Li leans her soft head against my shoulder. “He’s exhausted,” she whispers. “I think further play will have to wait.”

“We could wake him.” I give her a kiss, but I keep it gentle. No tongue, no heat. She’s putting a brave face on it in case I want to fuck, but I can feel how ready she is to sleep, too.

“If you would like more, we could go to my solarium, my love.”

“Naw, not tonight.” A year or two ago I probably would have dragged her off for a quickie. There are couches in her solarium, but they ain’t the best for fuckin’. Our time together’s made me patient. Our play earlier was more than satisfyin’: filled my soul while it emptied my balls. I can wait for more of that, rather than pushing for somethin’ brief and less’n magical when we’re both tired. “Want you on top of me, though.” It won’t be much longer that Li can sleep on top of me. Once her belly swells, it’s too uncomfortable for her. It ain’t my night, either. Should be Hardy’s turn to have her sleep on him. But, hey, you snooze, you loose.

 

Bed’s empty when I wake up. I know where Li’s gone; as I stretch and yawn, I roll over, tap the lens beside the bed so the big lens in the wall polarizes and I can look out over the beach. There she is, a stick figure running along the hard sand with a dozen other stick figures. I’d know Li anywhere, but she’s recognizable by the black ponytail that swishes all the way down to her ass.

That hair. It was the first thing about Li that I fell for. Before I knew her well enough to fall for _her_. I get lost in Li’s hair.

Hardy could be anywhere, since he doesn’t have any set morning schedule, but I ain’t surprised when I hear his voice from the nursery. He’s playing with Jack.

I prop a pillow under my chin and watch Li run for a few minutes. She leads the pack; sets the pace. She’s developed a good stride. She’s always been strong, my beautiful wife, but the running’s fairly new. She started it after I put my foot down on her hunting. She had a close call with a Rathmoz. I didn’t blame her – Rathmoz attack from above, are silent as the grave and almost impossible to see – but Li’s too precious to me to risk. I hardly ever say ‘no’ to her, but I forbid anything more than trap lines after that. She and Hardy both gave me the silent treatment for a week. She don’t like bein’ confined, and Hardy didn’t like losing his favorite hunting partner. I endured it. I didn’t bring her half-way across the galaxy and resettle a dead planet just to keep her safe, only to lose her to some carnivorous fucking bat.

I climb outta bed and head to the bath. Only downside to Li’s running is that I don’t get laid in the mornings anymore. Unless I feel like going one-on-one with Hardy, but that’s pretty rare. I like him well-enough. If you push me, I might even admit to lovin’ him. But I’m only interested in him that way ‘cause I’m in Li’s head and she wants him. He don’t have that incentive. He needs Li with us to really enjoy himself.

So I take care of my morning hard-on myself. Probably should do it into a cup, but that’s a mood-killer. Instead, I think about playin’ with Li yesterday an’ that takes care of business faster than usual.

After I wash up, I pull on a pair of pants and tuck two shivs into the pockets. I’ll dress for the day after Li comes back and we’ve had breakfast, but it won’t be much more than this. Furya’s a hot world – the hottest I’ve lived on. Some of the die-hard Necros still wear bits of armor, but even Vaako’s stopped wearin’ much more than a vest. Inside the Hab, it’s pants and a knife or two. I don’t even wear shoes anymore. Feels great to be so free.

I join Hardy and Jack in the nursery. It’s got a floor to ceiling lens lookin’ out over the beach, too, so I can still see Li. Nice to have my whole family in my sights. Hardy may not mean as much to me as Li and Jack do, but I don’t like him bein’ gone for long, either.

I kinda miss the fucker when he’s not around.

He’s stacking up wooden blocks that our two and a half year old terror is knocking down by rolling through them.

“I a sand worm, Daddy!” Jack crows when she notices me.

“Yeah?” I drop to my hands and knees so I’m at her level. I bow to no man, but Jack an’ Li they have me on my knees all the fuckin’ time. Women. “Sand worms ticklish?” I get her in the ribs, where I know she’s ticklish and smile when she squeals. Blocks go flying and Hardy goes after them, also on his hands and knees. Nice to know Jack brings him low, too.

Jack bats at my hands, wriggling wildly while she squeals and giggles. Nothin’ better than the sound of my baby’s laughter. “Sand worms not tick-ish, Daddy!”

“I think they are.” I get her again, this time above the hip-bone. Li’s ticklish there, too. Great spot.

“Stop, Daddy, stop!” Jack protests between giggles.

“Yeah, Daddy, stop,” Hardy grumbles. He stacks blocks futilely as Jack thrashes.

I sit back on my heels. He ain’t usually this sour, even first thing in the morning. “What’s with you? Antyon bite your ass?”

Jack swallows her giggles and worms around so she can look up into Hardy’s face. “Ant bite TooDaddy?”

“No, nothing bit me. And sand worms are ticklish.” He gets Jack on the other hip and she dissolves into giggles again.

 

We play with Jack until Li returns from her run, but there’s definitely something eatin’ Hardy, even if it ain’t an Antyon. When Li takes Jack off to change her diaper and dress for breakfast, I pull Hardy into the walk-in closet we share.

“What the fuck is with you?”

He leans back against the wall nearest the door and crosses his arms over his chest. “That an adjective or a verb?”

I cock an eyebrow at him. He looks away and shuffles against the wall.

“You don’t wanna tell me, fine. But tell Li. Get it off your chest. Hate it when you walk around like a black fuckin’ cloud.”

“That was an adjective,” Hardy mutters.

I turn my back on him and pretend to inspect my choice of vests. Wait until I hear him leave. Hardy’s the moodiest of the three of us – although Li has hurricane-force mood swings when she’s pregnant – but he’s got more to be moody about. My life ain’t all been wine and roses; Hardy’s spent his nose-down in shit in comparison.

Whatever’s eatin’ him, he’ll tell Li about it. He tells her everything.

Unless it’s about her.

I endure the dark cloud through breakfast and the legionnaires trainin’, which Hardy don’t need since he already knows how to kill everythin’ on the planet. He hovers off my left shoulder, glowering so hard I’m surprised he ain’t actually makin’ it rain. I give him the newbies’ training, less to piss him off than to get him outta my lack-a-hair for an hour.

Training don’t cheer him up, but his glower’s fittin’ for what I gotta do next, which is meet with the two new arrivals an’ tell ‘em we don’t have room. It’s a couple, man and a woman. Neither of ‘em are Furyans. They’re refugees from Aquilla, one of the last worlds the Necros toasted before I turned them towards the UnderVerse. They sit on a bench across from me and Hardy, separated from us by a fizzing blue sterile shield, holding hands, givin’ each other strength. Woman looks a lot like Li’s friend Chione, who stayed with the Armada. That’s what decides me.

“We’ll make a place for you,” I tell them.

Hardy raises an eyebrow at me. He knows we don’t got room. Zibon was built to house the original twelve-hundred Necros that followed me from the Armada. With returning Furyans and others like these two, our numbers have swelled to an even deuce. Every room in Zibon’s full, along with the half-dozen farms out in Eden.

“Hope you don’t mind campin’ out for a while,” I say.

“Anywhere is fine, Lord Riddick,” the woman says, squeezing her man’s hand.

“Think we got a skimmer free,” Hardy mutters, rubbing a hand through his shaggy crew-cut.

“We’ll figure somethin’ out. Healers’ll check you out before lunch an’ we’ll find you a place by tonight.” We instituted the quarantine after Ferrill, one of the returning Furyans, brought with him a nasty little virus even the Healers had trouble wipin’ out. Now that we got over three-dozen kids runnin’ around, somethin’ like that could do real damage. Two days gives Cays an’ her team enough time to screen new arrivals.

“Thank you, Lord Riddick,” the woman says.

I tell ‘em the rules, which are pretty simple. “You got any skills, tell Commander Vaako an’ he’ll hook you up. Otherwise, we got plenty for you to do. You want to eat? You work, like everyone else. We don’t got no rules here except that. We don’t use credits an’ no one gives a shit who or what you were on your homeworld. You kill anyone, rape anyone, steal anyone’s else’s shit, you answer to me. I solve problems with a knife. You don’t like the way I do things? Leave. That’s all.” That’s not all. As with any group of more than three people, there’s a peckin’ order, and politics. But they’ll find their own place in it. Everyone else has, even if it’s taken some bloody jostling. I had to kill five people in the first eighteen months. One of ‘em for doing something unmentionable with an Eschar. After that last one, everyone seemed to get the message that I wasn’t fuckin’ around. “We eat in the galley. Meal times’re posted on the lens outside. Oh, an’ Liaden, that’s my wife, she likes t’have tea with anyone new, so count on that later.”

Tea’s sacred for Li. She does it right: loose leaves and whisks and little cups. I love Chef’s food, but Li’s tea is the best thing I’ve ever tasted. She has a formal tea every other morning and an informal tea on alternating afternoons. She’ll usually invite the newbies to the informal tea, which is for me, and friends, of which Li has more than a few. She says it helps to get to know them in a more relaxed settin’. The formal tea’s where Li does her Lady Marshal business. Although I’ve told the newbies I settle things with a knife, Li actually settles more disputes than I do.

“We look forward to meeting the Lady Marshal,” the woman says.

“Good. That’s that, then. What’re your names?” Vaako’ll have already gotten them, and done a background check, ‘cause he’s a paranoid bastard, maybe even more than me. But I like to get the names myself, if for no other reason than to be able to tell Li, since that’s something Vaako won’t do. Vaako and Li don’t always rub along together so well. Probably because, personality-wise, they’re too much alike. At first I thought throwing them together would help – they’d realize how important the other was to me if they got to know each other better. But it didn’t work out that way. Just stoked Vaako’s jealousy and Li’s insecurity. So now I keep them apart. Not a lot, not obviously. Just enough that any interaction they have, they have through me.

I take the newcomers’ names and turn to Mr. Black Cloud, who’s still living up to his. “You seein’ Li now?”

Hardy shakes his head.

“Right, I’ll tell her. See you later.”

Hardy rubs his hand through his crew-cut. “What’re you doing now?”

I frown at him. What’s he think I’m doing now? Zibon don’t run itself. “Shift in the metalshop. You need somethin’?”

“No.” He shrugs.

He clearly does. I look at him. Wait. Li would crack under that look, flow into my arms and tell me what was wrong. But Hardy ain’t Li. He talks to me some; he talks to Li more. Sometimes he just bottles shit up for a while and then goes off to kill things for a few days. He didn’t seem particularly wound up when he went off huntin’, and he usually comes back in a better mood than when he left. Which is why I encourage his huntin’ and Li tolerates it, even though we both know he could get hurt. Not this time, I guess.

When he doesn’t say anythin’, I shrug and get on with what I ain’t being paid for.

 

I told the newbies everyone works if they wanna get fed. I’d be the exception to the rule if I wanted to be – no one expects the Lord Marshal t’do anythin’ other than be Lord Marshal. But bein’ Lord Marshal when we ain’t invading worlds is kinda boring, and I like to keep my hand in. Li says I lead by example. I’m not sure what she means by that, but if it’s that I train my own personal army to kill shit every day, and fix shit when I’m not killing it, then she’s right.

She usually is.

My mech skills ain’t the strongest – not like our resident Mad Scientist, who I swear rewires jump drives in his sleep – but I can fix most engines. Necro-tech wasn’t somethin’ I’d seen before Helion, but it ain’t hard to figure out. They use gravity and anti-gravity for most things, and to generate those forces, they use engines.

And like every engine I’ve ever come across, those engines break down.

There’s a big holoboard at the entrance to the metalshop with a list of broken equipment that needs fixing. I scroll down to the engines, pick three that I can fix in a couple of hours and get to it. While I’m workin’, I’m joined by Cutter, an albino-lookin’ legionnaire from Cygnus who’s as handy with a wrench as he is with a blaster, and his girl Bassy, who can rewire shit almost as fast as the Mad Scientist. The three of us work together a lot. Cutter an’ Bassy are pretty new as a couple – Bassy only joined us a year ago after stowing away on one of the first Cyclers – and it took them a while to get together ‘cause Bassy’s got a mouth on her and an attitude as big as any Furyan’s. But now they’re as comfortable with each other as me an’ Li. I listen to ‘em banter with a small smile.

After we finish repairing the third engine, we head up to the galley for lunch. There’s no shift-change. Nothin’ that formal. People do shit in Zibon ‘cause they want to. It’s a true community, somethin’ I’ve never been a part of before. Somethin’ I never even imagined when I decided to come home to Furya. I just wanted to get Li and our baby somewhere safe. Didn’t realize I’d be foundin’ the galaxy’s most successful commune.

I don’t see either Li or Hardy at lunch. Li’s usually out in Eden this time of day, mastermindin’ the farm; since I can’t hear her thoughts, she’s not in Zibon, so that’s a good bet. She’ll have Jack with her. Don’t know where Hardy is, but since his black cloud’ll only put me off my food, I’m not sorry he’s missin’.

Vaako’s not, and he’s waitin’ for me with a portable lens and a list of shit longer than both my arms. I’m patient with it – listenin’ to each problem and delegatin’ the solution; I’ve gotten real good at delegatin’ over the last three years – until we get to a dispute with one of the buyers of the ferrolingus metal the Necros make an’ we ship off-world.

“Fuck ‘em,” I say.

Vaako pauses and puts the stylus that he’s been using to make notes on the lens between his teeth.

I chew the flatbread Chef’s paired with sweet, smoky grilled Antyon. Delicious. “You heard me. Fuck ‘em. They don’t want to pay our price, plenty of others who will. I’m not negotiatin’ with the fuckers.”

“That was definitely a verb,” Daray, one of the watch commanders, remarks from where he’s sitting across the table.

Vaako snorts. “Of course, when she’s not here to hear it. So, we just walk away from our contract?”

“They don’t like it, they can come here and complain about it to my face.”

Daray chuckles into his Cark. “Negotiation by shiv.”

“And if they refuse to trade with us in the future?”

“They got anythin’ we need?” Ain’t many who do. I set up the Colony to be self-sufficient and we mostly are. Furya’s a good world, with lots of natural resources. We export our surplus, but we don’t import much.

Vaako checks the lens. “No. We trade them for navellium, but we can get that elsewhere.”

“We have a five-year supply, Lord Riddick,” Tirea, the Master Weaver, says from down the table. I shoot her a smile. Most of the senior officers and staff ear-wig on my meal-time conversations with Vaako. I don’t mind. Gets shit done without the need for a lotta meetings. I do enough of those already.

And the news we got such a big reserve is no surprise. I’m a horder – mostly sharp metal, but I’ll horde anything I need to live – and the senior staff follow my example. Li wouldn’t let me ship anything off-world until we had more than a year surplus from her farm. Vaako, Daray and my weapons Commander Bash wouldn’t part with a single blaster until we had enough weapons and ammo to blow up the entire quadrant. Hearin’ that Tirea and her Weavers have been hording the raw materials they use is just more of the same.

I approve.

“Then tell ‘em to fuck themselves,” I say to Vaako. “They don’t like it, they can come talk to me face-to-face. I got space in my calendar ‘round this time next year.”

Daray chuckles. “Not if the Lady Marshal has anything to say about it.”

I shake my head at him before I tear off another piece of flatbread. Part of breakin’ Li outta concubine mold was convincing her that no matter how much I love her, I wasn’t gonna let her force me into any set schedule. I do what I want, when I want. That’s why I’m the Lord Marshal. “Anything else?” I ask Vaako.

“Nothing pressing.”

“Anythin’ not pressin’?” I hate it when Vaako gets squirrelly.

He looks off into the middle distance. “A rumor. And a request.”

“C’mon, then. I ain’t gettin’ any younger.”

That provokes chuckles all around the table. The Necros who followed me to Furya are professional soldiers, and professional soldiers don’t tend to have a long life expectancy. ‘Specially when their former commander-in-chief didn’t think anything of losin’ fifty thousand men in a single attack. So that makes me one of the oldest of the senior staff, and they’re all getting’ a big laugh outta the fact that I’m thirty-nine standard this year. Pretty sure all I’m gonna hear at the party Li’s organizing for my birthday is how close I am to the big four-oh.

“The rumor is that something untoward occurred on a recent hunting trip,” Vaako says.

“Untoward?” _Untoward_ could be any-fucking-thing.

“That is the rumor.”

“Anythin’ more specific than that?”

“No.”

“Fine.” I ain’t got time to spend on gossip. Maybe _untoward’s_ what’s eatin’ Hardy. I’ll try to catch Li when she comes back from Eden and see if he’s told her. If not, I’ll ask her to spend some time one-on-one with him, see if she can’t get to the bottom of it. Ain’t gonna be my problem. “What the request?”

“Halle has agreed to be my wife. We’d like you to officiate.”

“‘Bout time.” Both Vaako and his woman have more than a little _prima donna_ about them; we’ve been bettin’ on how long she’d make him chase her. And how long he’d punish her for makin’ him. “When?”

“The next super-tide.”

Furya’s neighbor moon, Gyes, orbits retrograde. So twice a month, the moons and planet align and we get an extremely high tide. All the way to the foot of the Hab. Everyone heads down to the beach and collects all the seaweed, fish and crustaceans that get caught in the rock pools. Then we carry the feast up to the Pavillion, eat, drink and dance until dawn.

Now we got somethin’ extra to celebrate. “Happy to.” I offer him my hand. He takes my forearm in a gladiator hand-shake. “Why didn’t you tell me you were gonna ask her?”

“I wanted to make sure she’d say ‘yes.’”

Li didn’t think there was much doubt, but Halle’s even more reserved than Li is. I haven’t met many people harder to read. “Glad she did.”

Vaako cracks one of his rare grins. “No more than I.”

 

Li’s back from Eden mid-afternoon with a fussy, tired toddler.

“Her schedule’s off,” Li says as I take Jack from her and let Jack climb up onto my shoulders.

“We’ll fix that, won’t we, baby girl?” I say.

“Fix, Daddy,” Jack agrees around a yawn.

“You’ll let me tell you a story an’ you’ll take a nap like a good girl an’ let Mama have some time with TooDaddy.”

Li raises an eyebrow.

“Somethin’s eatin’ him. An’ Vaako says some rumor’s circulatin’ about his last hunt. Somethin’ happened.”

“What?” Li asks.

“Vaako didn’t know.”

“I’ll ask him. I hope it’s not a problem with Ythane. We have so few Furyan women.”

I nod. Nearly a hundred Furyan males have returned, but just a handful of Furyan women. Our numbers were skewed when it was just Necros, but on the Furyan side it’s really unbalanced. Doesn’t help that most of the others who have joined us are couples, like the pair today, or families. Some of the Furyan males have partnered up with Necro women, and a few with Necro men, but most of ‘em haven’t. Li an’ I worry they’re waitin’, and what they’re waitin’ for ain’t coming.

“She seems,” Li continues. “Well, she seems fractious.”

 _Fractious_? “That ain’t what you were thinkin’.” She’s thinkin’ that Ythane seems like a trouble-maker.

Li gives me a little smile. “’Fractious’ seemed more politic, my love. But I hardly know her. I’ve invited her to tea to remedy that. Along with Letzi, the Aquillian. Doesn’t she remind you of Chione?” She stretches up on her toes and gives me a kiss. “I’ll go find Hardy. Jack, be a good girl for Daddy.”

“Yes, Mama,” Jack answers, just before she grabs my ears like handles.

“I mean it, Jack. Behave.” Li gives me another kiss. “If she becomes impossible, summon me, my love.”

“Nah, we’ll be fine, won’t we, Jack?”

“Yes, Daddy!” She bounces on my shoulders and tugs my ears. I wrap my hand around her leg to keep her from falling. Jack may be a Furyan, and she might be a great hunter in years to come, but for now, she’s just like every other baby animal: no common sense when it comes to high places.

“C’mon, then, kid. Nap-time.”

She don’t go down easy. Li wasn’t kiddin’ ‘bout that. I have to tell Jack two stories, the second one in our bed, where she finally falls asleep. Li an’ Hardy don’t show up to use the bed, so I can leave her there. I track down Nazya, who’s lurkin’ in Li’s dressing room, and ask her to keep an eye on Jack. Then I head out to the beach.


	3. Chapter 3

I swim in Furya’s ocean every day. I like the exercise; I like watchin’ the fish, whose colors I can see underwater even with my shine job; and I like checking the nets we’ve strung at the mouth of the bay to keep predators off our beach. We got a lot of babies playin’ in the shallows now; it’d be more fuckin’ tragedy than our little community could stand if somethin’ got through the nets and ate one of ‘em.

After swimmin’ my three-mile circuit, I get drawn into a ball game our six teenagers are playin’ in the shallows. Three of ‘em are siblings, and they make an effective team with their father, Chuz. I lend my support to the other team, all single kids who have come with their parents to Furya. There’s a big gap between these kids and the generation of new Furyans, of which Jack is the oldest. I’m hopin’ there’s not a mental gap, but I don’t see any sign of it so far. These kids are as bold and brave and strong as my baby. They’ve come a long way with their parents, seen a lot, just to find a new home. They’re as ready as any born-Furyan to claim it.

The Chuz siblings are tough to beat, but with my help, my team manages it by a point. There’s no hard feelings and I end up walking back to Zibon with my arm around the oldest Chuz boy, Venek, rufflin’ his hair, much to his embarrassment, since he’s trying to copy Vaako’s smooth up do.

“There’re worse men to admire,” I tell the boy, ruffling his quiff again.

“I admire you, Lord Riddick, but Father won’t let me shave my head.”

That makes me chuckle. “Wait until you start losin’ your hair. Then you can shave it to the bone like I do. Hardy says you’re good with a bow.” Today wasn’t the first time I’ve made him take the newbies, and when he ain’t in such a black mood, he’s more talkative about the trainees’ strengths and weaknesses. “You ever tried throwing knives?”

The boy shakes his head, looking up at me with wide eyes.

“I’ll show you tomorrow. If you’re any good, I’ll get Tykkas to teach you. He’s the best. Never seen anyone as good as him.”

“Thank you, Lord Riddick.”

“Welcome.” I ruffle the hair again and chuckle when his cheeks flush.

As we near the Hab, my ears prick. A whistle, high and thin and almost too far away to hear. I let the boy go and quicken my pace until I’m a few steps ahead of the group. Turn my head to see if I can catch it. I hold up my right hand and close it into a fist, so the group behind me stops and falls silent. Chuz and Venek creep up beside me. Chuz has a blaster in one hand and a blade in the other. He took weapons down to the beach to play with his kids; I can see how his family made it to Furya, and why his eldest already has some skills.

“My lord,” Chuz whispers. “What do you hear?”

I shake my head. I’m not sure what it is. Don’t sound like an engine, or a weapon, or anything I’ve heard before. I beckon the others after me and continue moving towards the Habitable.

When I’m within the shadow of the Hab, I break into a run. Sound’s clear now, even though the others can’t hear it. It’s in my head, and it’s getting louder as I get closer. As our minds connect and I can hear Liaden’s thoughts more clearly.

She’s screaming. _Screaming_.

I tear upwards through the Hab, leaving Chuz and the kids far behind me, taking the stairs two and three at a time. I’m faster than any elevator. I’m following Li’s thoughts: one long, head-splitting, soul-shattering howl of agony. I can’t tell what’s wrong. She didn’t scream in her mind like this when the Rathmoz nearly killed her, or when she was givin’ birth to Jack. I have to find her. I push myself harder, pounding up the stairs, through the corridors. As I near our quarters, I see our guard, Caden, standing at attention at his station in front of the outer doors.

“Where’s Liaden?!” I roar at him.

He points inside. I tear past him, through the outer reception chamber and into our bedroom.

Li’s kneeling on the floor, picking up Jack’s toys and putting them into a carrier. Jack’s a few feet away, playing with two stuffed animals, making them head-butt each other. I skid to a stop. Both my girls are fine.

But the screaming’s still going on in my head and Li doesn’t look up at me. I drop down in front of her and realize that what I thought was a pattern on her dress is wet spots from the tears dripping off her chin. I push the toys away and gather her up in my arms. “What happened?”

She doesn’t answer. Lets me take it from her mind. Afternoon tea. A dozen women in Li’s solarium, enjoying the view over the beach and Chef’s sweet cakes. Couple of new faces: the Aquillian woman and the Furyan girl, Ythane.

Tea and girl-talk. Li and Zetty ain’t the only ones with swellin’ bellies. Tirea’s on her second pregnancy, same as Li, but further along. It’s all friendly, light-hearted, until Ythane says, “I hope I don’t end up pregnant. Although I can see how it could happen. Hardy’s so lusty.”

I can feel Li trying to smile, trying to pass off the comment. “Furyan men,” she says lightly.

“Are they all like that?” Ythane says, faking wide eyes. “I don’t know how you can keep up with two of them. Hardy was at me all night.”

Liaden tries to swallow but her throat’s so tight and her mouth’s so dry, she can’t. She takes a sip of tea that burns down to her stomach. “What do you mean?”

“Didn’t he tell you?” Ythane smiles, the first smile Li’s seen from her. It’s a real predator’s grin. “The nights we were out hunting. Well, I thought we were going hunting, but after he kept me up all night, we didn’t get much hunting done. Just those four Antyons. We saw a dozen more but didn’t have time to take them. Sweet Gods. Is Riddick like that? Would you mind sharing him, too? You _must_ need a break now and then.”

Li takes another sip of tea to try to moisten her tongue before she says, “That’s a question you’d have to ask the Lord Marshal.” Her voice sounds distant and vague even to her own ears. She puts her tea down and stands, forcing a smile for the women who are staring at her. “Please excuse me. Sometimes food does not agree with me.”

She doesn’t run from the room, but only because her legs are shaking so badly she can barely walk. Nazya catches her at the door, grabbing her by one elbow and steering her down the corridor towards our quarters. Nazya’s hissing in Li’s ear, “She lies, my lady. She lies.”

Li grips Nazya’s hand. “I knew something was wrong. He wouldn’t tell me—”

“He wouldn’t do that,” Nazya insists.

“He did. Oh, Nazya, he did. He did. He did.” She keeps repeating as Nazya rushes her into our bedroom. Nazya tries to steer Li to our bed, but Li doesn’t want to be anywhere near the bed, with all its memories of Hardy. She pushes away and staggers to my desk. Collapses in my chair.

Nazya kneels next to her anxiously. “My lady, what should I do?”

“Would you—” I can feel Li trying to think through the mad whirlwind of pain and confusion and denial and HOW-COULD-HE-DO-THIS-TO-ME circling in her head. “Would you pack some things for me and Jack? For the black sand beach. Enough for a few days.”

“You can’t leave now, lady.”

“I need to. I need to be alone.”

“I’ll get Lord Riddick.”

Liaden puts a hand on Nazya’s arm. “No. Please pack our things as I asked. I’ll tell Riddick when I’ve had a few minutes to think.”

I back out of her mind and look down into her tear-streaked face. “Nazya packin’?”

She nods.

“I’ll go with you.” After I fucking strangle Hardy.

“My love,” she whispers. “Please. I need to be alone.”

“No. You’re not gonna be alone while you’re this fucked up. You can leave the Hab if you want. I’ll take you anywhere. But I’m not leavin’ you alone.”

She reaches up – her hand is still shaking like a leaf in a strong breeze – and touches my cheek. “I’ll take Jack. And Faz. I’ll be safe. But I need to be away from here. I need to feel my way through this.”

“Don’t think so.” The only thing she’s feeling at the moment is pain. The screaming’s thinner now, weaker, but it’s still filling her mind, and mine. I’m not letting her suffer through this on her own.

She folds her lips together. That’s one of Li’s tells. Means she’s losing patience. “Please, my love.”

“You goin’ now?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll be down tonight. After dinner. You have a couple quiet hours. But you’re not goin’ to bed alone, Li. I’m not havin’ you lie awake all night cryin’.”

She nods. “Very well, my love.”

I help her pick up Jack’s toys. Help her stand, since she’s still shaking. “You don’t want to ask him?” I ask as she shoulders the carrier full of toys. “Give him a chance to explain?”

She shakes her head. “I knew something was wrong. I didn’t know what. But I knew. So did you.”

I knew he was in a mood, but I didn’t have the first idea what it was about. An’ I don’t believe the Furyan girl any more than Nazya does. She’s lyin’. Maybe not about Hardy fuckin’ her. That’d explain why he’s been so squirrelly. But Hardy fuckin’ her all night? That don’t sound like him. He likes sex as much as I do, but he’s not up for it more than once or twice a night. Downside of bein’ older than thirty standard an’ gettin’ laid regular. He’s also anythin’ but sexually aggressive. What was done to him on Gallin left a lotta scars. Li’s brought him back, more’n I ever thought possible, but he _never_ initiates sex.

“This don’t feel right,” I say.

Li looks up at me with tear-stained eyes, and I see the certainty in her mind. A hundred small things, leading up to the one-on-one time I asked her to have with him. She took him for a walk through her garden, but he wouldn’t talk to her. So she led him to her garden-within-a-garden. It’s their secret place, a hidden bower of sweeping willows and soft moss. ‘Though it ain’t secret from me, I’ve only ever seen it in her mind; I’ve never poked my nose in. It’s a place she created just for him, to make him feel special. It’s where Li thinks their son was conceived. But today it wasn’t special. Today he didn’t respond to anything she said or did. Finally, he pushed her down and had her suck him off. He kept his eyes closed the whole time.

He’ll be lucky if I don’t gouge them out.

I hug her to me and wipe her cheeks with my thumb. That doesn’t stop the flow. She’s not sobbing now, just crying, constantly and quietly. I can’t stand it, watching her break.

“I’ll be there before dark.”

She nods.

“I still love you,” I tell her. “No matter what. Nothin’s gonna change that.”

She stretches up and kisses my cheek. “And I love you.”

“Always?”

“Always.”

Nazya appears behind Li, laden with carrier bags. Looks like she’s packed for a month. “Lady?”

Li backs out of my arms. “Thank you, Nazya. I’ll take those. Would you carry Jack for me?”

“I’ll take those,” I say. I hold my hands out for the bags and take them when Nazya hesitates. “Go find Faz and tell him to meet us in the hangar.”

Nazya curtseys to me, but I don’t miss that she looks to Li for confirmation before she moves. Nazya and I are gonna have to have a talk. But not now. Not when Li’s looking like she’s fleeing the fucking apocalypse as she scoops up Jack and moves towards the door.

Jack’s usual babble dries up when she sees her mother’s tears. She pats Li’s wet cheek. “Mama sad?”

“Yes, Mama sad,” Li answers. One of the things I admire so much about Li as a mother: she never lies to Jack. An’ she never assumes Jack won’t understand somethin’ just ‘cause she’s a baby.

“Jack bad girl?” Jack asks.

“No, my darling. You haven’t done anything wrong. We’re going to the beach, just you and me. Would you like that?”

“Mama swim?”

“Yes, we’ll swim and build sand castles. Do you want Kia to come with us?”

Jack nods eagerly. The hellhound is her best friend as well as her nursemaid. We detour to Li’s garden to collect the young hound, then descend to the hangar. I load the bags onto a skimmer and then draw my girls down onto a bench and put my arms around them both. “I’ll see you tonight,” I tell them.

“Daddy, no,” Jack insists. “Mama sad.”

I flick my daughter’s nose. “When I come, I’ll make Mama smile.” Maybe by bringing her Hardy’s head on a stick. “Until then, you be good for Mama.”

Jack glares defiantly at me, another way she takes after her mother.

Liaden leans her head into my chest. “I won’t tell you not to come, but if you do, please come alone. I need some time.”

“Yeah.” I stroke her soft hair. “It’ll be okay, Li.”

“No, my love. It won’t. Not for a long time. Then, maybe, it will fade. Or maybe this will be the pain that never passes. I don’t know.”

Fuck, what can I say to make this better?

“Li, you told me that all wounds heal. You told _him_ that. I don’t know what he did or why, but before you decide this is the thing we can’t come back from, make sure you know what it is.”

“I’m not deciding anything at the moment,” she says. “This isn’t something I can reason my way through. I have to feel it.”

Before I can look into her mind to see what she means, Faz arrives, puffing and sweating. “Lady Marshal. Lord Riddick.”

I uncoil from around my girls and clap him on the shoulder. “Liaden needs to go the black sand beach. Can you take her? Make sure it’s safe? I’ll be there before dark to spell you.”

“Of course, Lord Riddick.” Faz’s as fiercely devoted to Li as me or Hardy. Or as fiercely devoted to Li as I thought Hardy was. I can’t figure out what he’s done any more than she can.

I watch them leave, then go to find our fucked-up third.

But I can’t find him anywhere.

 

I see the healer Cays and Chef before I take a skimmer and head down to the black sand beach. Between lookin’ for Hardy, makin’ excuses for Li bein’ away for a few days and makin’ sure nothing falls apart while I’m gone, it’s nearly night before I set off.

I land the skimmer on a stone landing-pad at the edge of the jungle, next to a skimmer already parked there. The beach is a long crescent of black sand, bordered by jungle. These black sand beaches are the safest on Furya. Lowies don’t live under ‘em; Antyons don’t hunt on ‘em. There are smaller predators, and the seas ain’t safe, but there’s nothin’ that really threatens Li.

Still, I’m happy to see Faz standing on the porch of our beach house, the little hab we’ve built into the dunes, above the high-water mark. There are a dozen other habs along this beach, but they’re all a few minutes walk from each other, to give everyone some much-needed privacy. Zibon’s a good place. A safe place: easily run and easily defended. But sometimes two thousand people livin’ in such close quarters gets too cramped for me. And I ain’t the only one. Nearly every family has one of these little get-aways somewhere.

The last rays of the sun glint on the edges of Faz’s armor as he salutes. I nod at him. His dark eyes track over my shoulder to the edge of the jungle.

I glance back, following his line of sight. “Antyon?” I ask. That’d be a first, but we probably shouldn’t expect the new prides to behave exactly the way the old ones did.

“No, my lord. Hardy is here.”

What’d the bastard do, run the whole way from Zibon? Our two skimmers were the only ones out when I left. I turn and flip my hand at the tree-line.

“My lord, the Lady Marshal specifically asked me not to allow Hardy entrance.”

If Hardy wanted to come through Faz, he would’t have any trouble. Li thinks I’m the most deadly thing Furya’s got to offer, but havin’ gone to the mat once with Hardy, I don’t share her certainty. He’s a brutal, no-holds-barred killer, and he never gives up until what he’s bent on killing is dead.

I clap Faz on the shoulder. “I’ll take care of it. You get back to Zibon before curfew. Send Tykkas down in the morning.”

Faz stiffens. “I request the honor of guarding the Lady Marshal as long as she remains away from Zibon.”

Li thinks the legionnaires do what she asks because of their loyalty to me. But more than half of ‘em are in love with her and would follow her to the ends of the universe. Something Hardy clearly wasn’t thinkin’ about when he fucked her over.

“Sounds good. Tell Vaako to change the roster. You get some sleep and come back down after breakfast.”

“Yes, Lord Riddick. Sir, you should know that the Handmaiden, the Healer Cays, Leto’s companion, your former concubines, and the Master Weaver have all signalled, requesting to join the Lady Marshal.”

“What’d she say?”

“I took their calls. She asked not to be disturbed.”

“What’d you say?”

“That the Lady Marshal had asked not to be disturbed but I would pass on the message.”

“Good man. I’ll deal with it.”

Faz nods. “Good-night, my lord.”

He picks up a little satchel lying on the porch at his feet and shoulders it. His eyes track over my shoulder to the tree-line again. Glancing back, I see a dark shape emerge from the trees and being making it’s way across the scrubby dunes towards the hab.

“The Furyan had done the Lady Marshal a grave dishonor,” Faz says slowly.

That story spread fast. I know Liaden didn’t tell Faz – she’s so closed-mouthed that the only way I can get things out of her is to look into her mind – so someone else must’ve. The legionnaires gossip like a bunch of old women. One of the things I like least about living in such a close community: everyone knows everyone else’s business. I should outlaw gossip, but it’d be even harder to enforce than the ban on fucking dead Eschar.

“Yeah,” I acknowledge.

“If you wish me to despatch him, my lord,” Faz offers, fingering the blaster on his hip.

I clap Faz on his armored shoulder again. “Think we better let Li decide if she can forgive him first.”

“She should not forgive him. Any man worthy of the Lady Marshal’s affection would be loyal to her for eternity.”

I feel the same way. I thought Hardy did, too. Not the first time I’ve been wrong, but there’s a lot of weight to this mistake. “I’ll tell him that. Tell Vaako I’ll be back before lunch tomorrow.”

“Yes, my lord.”

His skimmer’s the opposite direction from where Hardy’s approaching, which is good because Faz is still fingering his blaster as he moves off over the sand. I sit down on one of the driftwood benches I’ve built and wait for Hardy.

He stops a few meters away. With my goggles down and the setting sun casting long shadows everywhere, I can’t see his face, but I can see the pain in every line of his body. He’s hunched over like he’s got a gut wound. “I need to see her,” he says hoarsely.

“She wants to be left alone,” I tell him.

“You’re here.”

“Didn’t want her cryin’ all night. I promised t’leave again in the morning.”

“She’s already crying. I can smell it.” Hardy lifts his head and scents the evening breeze. Not sure what he’s smelling. I can’t smell Liaden’s tears over the salt of the ocean, although I can smell both my girls. Jack’s baby smell is like a beacon to a predator, which is a compelling argument for stayin’ the night. “I’ll leave in the morning, she wants me to go,” Hardy says.

“I’ll ask her. She says ‘no,’ you need to stay outside. I’m not fucking around with you. She’s in pieces.”

There’s no jokes about how I’m using ‘fuck’ now. Hardy clenches his fists and tucks them against his chest. “Need to explain.”

“Unless the explanation’s the Furyan girl’s a liar or she drugged you an’ jumped you—” I pause, because Hardy has had sex – or at least ejaculation – forced on him before. If that’s what happened, Hardy’s not the one I’m going to tear a new asshole.

Hardy shakes his head.

“Then Li’s not gonna want to hear it. But I’ll ask. You stay out here.”

Hardy nods.

I stand and tap my code into the lens beside the door. It blinks at me but doesn’t open.

Li’s changed the code.

I tap in my master override code. No door on Furya’s closed to me. It’s _my_ fucking planet.

When the door opens and I duck inside the little hab, it’s all in darkness. I lift my goggles and move silently through the house. We modified the original hab to accommodate our growing family. The front’s a great room with plenty of space for our babies to play. Kitchen and bath separate the great room from the elongated annex, which holds our bedroom and the nursery.

A hellhound’s low growl greets me when I part the soundproof, translucent veil that separates the bedroom from the bath. I pat Kia on the head to reassure her before moving to our big bed. The one we’ve shared so many times, him, me and Li. What the fuck was Hardy thinkin’?

My girls are lying together in the middle of the bed. Li’s curled around Jack. The pillow under Li’s head has a big wet stain I can see even in the dark. She cried herself to sleep after all.

I lift Jack out of Li’s arms. The toddler barely even stirs. One great thing about having such an active kid: when Jack goes down, she sleeps like the dead. Used to scare the shit outta me when she was a baby. I’d go into the nursery in the middle of the night and poke her to make sure she was still breathing. Now I’ve come to appreciate how deep she sleeps.

Li’s too worn out to do much than murmur when I take our daughter from her. I reassure her with a touch on the cheek before I carry Jack into the nursery and tuck her into bed. The hellhound pads silently after me and settles down at the end of Jack’s crib. She blinks her silver eyes at me before laying her head across her crossed paws with a small huff.

“Keep an eye on her, Kia,” I whisper to the hellhound before returning to my wife.

I slide into the bed behind Li, careful to keep my sandy feet off the sheets, and stroke her hair. Even if that thin screaming hadn’t started in my mind again, I could tell she was awake from her ragged breathing. She doesn’t say anything, though.

“Hardy’s here,” I say quietly. “He wants a chance to explain.”

“No,” she says, matching my tone of voice. Li’s got fucking master poker face. She don’t let anything she don’t want you to see show. I only know that she’s still in agony from what’s going on inside her head.

“He looks as fucked up as you are. Give him a chance.”

“He betrayed you, too. Why would you want me to?”

I think about that for a minute. The only thing about Hardy fucking the Furyan girl that bothers me is how much it’s hurt Li. “’Cause it might help you.”

“It won’t. I need to feel my way through this on my own.”

I probe. Past the screaming. Past the embarrassment of having Hardy’s infidelity flung at her so publically. Past the hurt. I need to know what’s at the root of this, beyond the fact of Hardy sticking his dick in some other girl.

Walking through Li’s mind is like walking through her garden. Shining pebbled paths lead to arbors of roses and exotic flowers I don’t got names for. Tall, leafy trees overhang the paths, representing years of her life, from the ancient, gnarled morlins of her childhood to swaying green saplings that bear her memories of Jack and me and Hardy. I see spots on some of the saplings’ leaves – blight – Li’s rethinking her memories of Hardy in light of his betrayal. That ain’t good. I continue down the paths, where bright flowers vie for my attention, each a happy thought that I want to pick and keep for my own. I love Li’s mind, even when she’s upset. It’s as beautiful as she is.

But there’s a darkness to it, too. In the blood-red shrubs bedded under the bright flowers. In the carnivorous plants whose serrated leaves snap at me as I pass. This is Li’s bloodthirsty, merciless side. The side that makes her such an excellent strategist, but also suits her to the title she’s won for herself: Lady Marshal.

And then there’s the crypt.

Far in a walled corner, where in her real garden there’s a door out to the rest of Zibon, there’s a stone lintel. I duck under it and venture down a set of worn stairs. I’ve only been down here a few times. It’s where she keeps her worst memories. The destruction of her homeworld. Her Collaring. The years with the previous Lord Marshal. The death of loved ones: her parents, her friend Aimee, and last year, the old healer, Tomoetu. Nearly at the bottom of the crypt, down among the scuttling beetles, mouldering bones and rotting wood, the memory of the time I raped her.

I knew I’d see this. I remember when she buried the memory here, to keep me from seeing it again. I nudge the memory with my toe and endure it as it replays through my head. I have my own memory of that morning, the madness Shirah drove me to, the terrible hurt I inflicted on Li, and I haven’t managed to bury it as deep as Liaden has. I shake it off. This ain’t what I’m here for.

My toe’s scuffed a hole in the leaf-litter and rotting wood of the crypt floor. Something dark glints in the hole. The bedrock of Li’s mind. Her deepest, most buried fears.

I kneel and brush away the dirt and splinters. Things with too many legs scuttle over my hands. I flick them away and lay bare Li’s worst fears.

Doubt, hideous, crippling doubt drives me to my hands and knees. _Not good enough. Never good enough_. The most expendable of her siblings; the one they could afford to sell. The least of two dozen servants in the busy, cultured Feleti household she was sold to. Too clumsy and barbaric to work in the house; banished to the garden. _Not good enough_. Training her awkward teenage body to move slowly and with grace. Learning the Feleti customs late at night while the rest of the household slept. Practicing each movement over and over until she was good enough to serve at table. _Never good enough_. All her training couldn’t please her first Lord Marshal, who demanded perfection in everything. _Gennica’s more beautiful. Illoru’s more graceful_. Even me, as much as I love her, I’ve made her feel inadequate. By bringing Hardy into our relationship, by making her accept him as our third, I’ve made her feel like she wasn’t enough for me. _Never enough_.

And now Hardy’s made her feel like she wasn’t enough for him.

I draw out of her mind slowly. Stroke my fingers through the hair she’s pulled back into the loose braid she wears to sleep. “Think I understand better now,” I say to her.

“Do you?”

Li rarely questions me outright. That alone tells me how much Hardy’s betrayal has fucked her up.

“Yeah. All the explanations in the universe ain’t gonna help, are they?”

Li lets out a long breath. “No.”

“Lemme tell him that. If he understands, let him come in and sleep with us tonight. No one has to say a thing.”

“I came down to here to avoid exactly that.”

I stroke her hair, kiss her behind her ear. “Some things can’t be avoided, Li. Some things gotta be faced. Pretty sure that’s what it means to be married.”

“I’m _not_ his wife.”

Maybe that was a mistake, too. Maybe things would be different if we’d had a second wedding. But he never asked her, and Li’s traditional about things like that. “Still mine?”

“Always.”

“I wanna sleep with you tonight, wife.”

“I already agreed to that, husband.”

“Like him to sleep with us, too,” I say, finally committing. “That don’t mean I’m on his side. Just that I want us all to get some sleep.”

“Do you think sleep will be possible, lying beside him and thinking of him with Ythane?” Li asks.

“That what you were thinkin’ about when you cried yourself to sleep?”

She nods. “Among other things.”

“What other things?”

“I was thinking of the times I’ve been called a whore, both to my face and behind my back, for being with him. I was thinking of the nights that I’ve stayed awake to pleasure him after I’d already found my release with you and wanted only to sleep. I was thinking of all the times that I have seen his eyes linger on other women, and wonder whether Ythane was the only woman he has betrayed me with, or just the most recent. I was thinking of the months I have yet to carry the burden of his child, and the years beyond that to regret conceiving him—”

“Li, stop, stop, shh.” I wrap my arms around her and rock her against my chest. I’ve never heard her so angry, or so bitter. “I don’t want you thinkin’ any of that. None of it’s true. An’ no matter whose DNA went into him, that’s _our_ son. Ours, sweetheart, yours and mine.”

“If Ythane conceives, will that child be ours, too?”

“Don’t you twist this around on me. I don’t want you thinkin’ any of that. That’s why I’m not gonna leave you alone. Not tonight. Not any night. If Hardy bein’ with us will make you think those things, I’ll tell him to go. But you never thought any of that before.”

“Before, when I was blind and ignorant?”

“No, before when you trusted us. I’m not sayin’ Hardy hasn’t fucked that trust. Or that he don’t got a long way to go to earn it back. But I fucked your trust once, too, and we came back from that. You didn’t run away from me t’lick your wounds then like you’re doin’ now. You fought for me—”

“That was different.”

“Only difference is that when I hurt you, you didn’t believe deep down that you deserved it. You knew it had nothin’ t’do with you an’ I needed your help. Now you got this crazy fear that you’re not enough for him and that’s why he’s done this – which I’m two hundred percent sure ain’t true – so you’re turnin’ your back on him instead of tryin’ to figure out what went wrong.”

“So it’s my fault.”

“’Course not. It’s his. But this ain’t you, Li. I’ve never seen you turn away from anythin’ wounded. Not even when you coulda been killed. He’s out there hurtin’ as bad as if you’d stabbed him in the gut and you won’t even speak to him. That’s fear. You’re lettin’ fear rule you. I’ve never seen you do that before.”

“So I’m weak as well as blind.”

Fuck is she angry. And defensive. “You’re not weak, an’ you’re not blind, or stupid, or anythin’ else. You’re the strongest person I’ve ever known, Li. Hardy hit you right where you live, didn’t he?”

“If you mean that I value loyalty above all else, yes.”

“No, that’s not what I mean.” But I don’t elaborate. She needs to figure out her fear, and conquer it, herself. That’s probably why she’s been askin’ to be alone. But she’s not the only one with fears. Hardy wouldn’t be pacin’ around outside, askin’ to come in where he knows he ain’t welcome, if he wasn’t afraid, too. His biggest fear right now has to be losin’ Li. I know ‘cause I share that fear. An’ if we leave her alone, and let her wall us out, let her run away, that fear could become a reality. “So, can he come t’bed if he promises to keep his mouth shut and his hands to himself?”

“Is that what you want?”

“Yeah.”

“Very well.”

She’s not happy about it, but she’ll do it, because I’m asking her to.

 

Hardy’s sitting on the porch, knees to his chest, head down in his arms, when I open the door. I sit down next to him. He turns his head to look at me. Even with the sun down and everything shifted to purple by my shine job, I can see the raw rims of his eyes and the wetness on his cheeks.

“How much of that did you hear?” I ask.

“All of it. Window’s open.”

‘Course it is. That’s how I could smell Jack so clearly.

“So, can you?”

“What?”

“Keep your mouth shut and your hands to yourself.”

“I’m not a dog. I can control myself.”

Recent evidence to the contrary, but sayin’ so will only make the situation worse. “C’mon in, then.”

Hardy shakes his head. “She doesn’t want to see me.”

“You’re right, she don’t. But she _needs_ to. Pretty sure you need to see her, too. Or you can run away, like she did. Hole up somewhere in the jungle and cry yourself to sleep. She’ll be doin’ the same thing. Only I’ll be holdin’ her and you’ll be alone. Your call.”

Hardy uncoils. He’s capable of the fastest, lightning motion I’ve ever seen, but now he moves slow. Hunched. In pain. “I’ll come in.”

I take his hand and pull him to his feet as I stand. “Good call.”

Li’s sitting in the middle of the bed when we enter the bedroom. She’s wearing a nightgown, something she hasn’t done in years. She watches us, but doesn’t say anything, and her expression’s as dark an’ cold as anything I’ve ever seen.

I sit on the edge of the bed and strip down to the skin. I don’t care what’s happened, I’m not wearing clothes to bed with my wife. “You had some water, Li?” I ask. Otherwise she’s going to be dehydrated from all the crying.

She nods and pulls back the covers for me. I slide in next to her, lie back into the pillows, and tap my chest. Li settles against me with her head on my shoulder, but she doesn’t curl around me the way she usually does. She lies on her back with her arms crossed over her slightly rounded belly.

Hardy sits on the edge of the bed with his back to us. He’s still wearing briefs and a sleeveless vest. “Did you mean what you said about the baby?” he asks heavily.

“Thought we agreed no talking,” I say before Li can answer.

“I need to know.”

“I need to know if you made love with Ythane,” Li says. Her voice is quiet and even. Not giving a thing away. But I can still hear that high, thin screaming in her head.

“No,” says Hardy.

“She says you did.”

“She . . . she did sex. Only woman I’ve ever made love with is you.”

That’s the oddest fucking way I’ve ever heard anyone refer to humpin’. Hardy’s got issues with sex, that I understand. What he just called fucking, that I don’t.

“More than once?” Li asks.

“Li,” I say softly. These are details we don’t need to do tonight, when everything’s so raw and there’s clearly more goin’ on here. ‘She did sex’ – what the fuck does that even mean?

“He doesn’t have to answer,” she says coolly.

“Tell you anything you want to know,” Hardy says. “It was just the once. I . . . left after.”

Li nods against my shoulder. “I meant what I said about the baby.”

Hardy shudders as though she’d stabbed him.

“Li,” I say to stop her before she says something he can’t forgive. I’ve never known her to be cruel before.

“But,” she continues. “I was wrong to say it. This is why I want to be alone. I am so hurt—“ Her voice breaks. “I will say things that I should not and that you will hate me for—”

Hardy turns and crawls into the bed and puts his arms around her. I turn on my side and pull both of them to me. “Stop talking,” I growl. “No more tonight. You’re just rippin’ each other up.”

“Lemme say one thing,” Hardy says. He’s clutching at Li like a drowning man clutching a spar and she’s lying rigid as a piece of wood. She doesn’t touch either of us. “I could never hate you, Li.”

Li doesn’t answer, but the thought that rings in her mind keeps me awake for hours.

_But I could hate you._


	4. Chapter 4

I wake when Li slides out of my arms and climbs out of the bottom of the bed. Hardy’s rolled over in his sleep, the way he usually does. His back is to us and he doesn’t stir.

Li pads almost silently out of the bedroom. I hear her use the ‘fresher, which she does a lot at night when she’s pregnant. I expect her to come back to bed afterwards. Instead, I hear her go into the nursery to check on Jack, then tip-toe through to the kitchen, pour herself a beaker of water, and slip through the great room and out the front door.

I’m up after her a moment later. Naked. Not caring. There’s too much in that jungle that would eat her if it got the chance.

I find her sitting on one of the driftwood benches. She’s in pretty much the same position that Hardy was. Knees to her chest. Arms wrapped around her legs. She’s got her head up, looking out over the beach. Her eyes are as red as Hardy’s were; her cheeks as wet.

“Thought you’d come back to bed,” I say as I sit next to her.

“I didn’t want to disturb you and Hardy.”

“Only thing that disturbs me is you not lyin’ next to me.”

“I’ll come back to bed soon,” she says. “After I finish my water.”

After she cries herself out again.

“I’m not in a hurry.” I put my arm across the back of the bench. Not around her, but resting against her shoulders.

“You’re not wearing anything. You shouldn’t be out here naked,” she objects.

“What, you think the bugs’ll mind?”

“If you get bitten in a delicate place you’ll have to explain it to Cays.”

I chuckle at the thought of having to explain a bug-bite on my dick to the healer. And I realize it’s the first time I’ve laughed since I heard Li screaming.

I listen now, but her mind’s quiet. Finally.

“Tell me what you’re thinkin’,” I say.

“My mind’s open to you, my love.”

“Yeah, but talking it out might help.”

She’s silent for a minute, and I hear her thinking that talking’ll probably do more harm than good. But she finally says, “I was thinking of the Furyan girl, Ythane, and what she said to me. I have done nothing to her. I invited her to tea to make her feel welcome. Why would she strike at me like that?”

“Pride,” I answer. “If what Hardy said is true an’ he avoided her after, her pride’s probably pretty bruised.”

“ _If_ what Hardy said is true.”

“Li, I know what he’s done has hurt you so deep you’re not thinkin’ straight, but he’s never lied to you about nothin’, has he?”

She shakes her head slowly before taking a sip of water.

“One mistake don’t undo years of honesty.” Or years of loving, but she’s not ready to hear that.

“No, it’s doesn’t,” she admits. “Is there something about me that Furyan women detest? Elkie’s the only one who’s a friend and I never see her now.”

“You’re a rival,” I say. “You’ve got two of their men wrapped around your finger—”

“Had,” she says.

“Have. Would he be so cut up if he wasn’t still crazy about you?”

“All he cares about is the baby. You heard him.”

I heard his heart breaking when he thought he’d lost her. “Fuck, Li, that ain’t true.”

She rocks forward a little. “I don’t know what’s true anymore.” Her voice cracks and she begins crying again.

I wrap my arm around her shoulders and pull her to me, not caring when she drops her beaker and water splashes onto the sand. I drag her into my lap and coax her arms up around my neck. Feel her tears smear against my skin. “Li, you know what’s true. I love you an’ Jack loves you an’ Hardy loves you, even though you don’t believe it right now. That’s all true. You know what else is true? All three of us are human and we make mistakes. I’ve made some big fuckin’ mistakes an’ you forgave me without thinkin’ twice. What’s different about this?”

She shakes her head, grinding her cheek against my collar.

“You know what else is true? You’re human, too. You ain’t perfect, even though you’re pretty fucking close. You make mistakes, and we forgive you—”

“Would you forgive me if I had sex with Vaako?”

That draws me up short. “You really askin’ that?” She better not be _thinkin’_ about that. A peek inside her head shows she’s not, not really.

“Yes. Would you?”

“I . . . dunnow. I’d like to think I would. Probably after I killed him, though.”

“Because your love for him is conditional on his loyalty. I’ve learned something about myself today. Something I didn’t know before. Something I am not at all proud of—”

“Your love’s conditional on loyalty?” I don’t believe that. She wouldn’t be so hurt if she’d stopped loving him.

“I learned today that my love can die.”

I don’t believe that, either. I might believe that he hurt her so bad her love turned to hate for a while, but I can’t believe that she’d ever stop loving him.

Or me. ‘Cause at base, that’s what this is about for me. I could give up our threesome, if she can’t forgive him. Sure, I’d miss having Hardy around all the time, but he’s Li’s lover first and mine second. And he’ll always be Jack’s TooDaddy. He’s family; he doesn’t have to sleep in our bed for that.

What I care about a great deal more is Li thinking she could stop loving me. I’ve never doubted her love for a second. Not even when we were at our worst. When I dismissed her as my concubine and she tried to leave me. When Shirah drove me crazy and I thought I’d have to give Li up. When I raped her and thought she’d never let me touch her again. No matter how bleak it got, I’ve always been to-the-core-certain of her love.

The idea that I might have a reason to doubt it is worse than a million infidelities.

“You tellin’ me your love for Hardy’s dead? ‘Cause you’re cryin’ awful hard over somethin’ that’s dead.”

“I’m saying this might be a mortal blow,” she whispers.

“I don’t see why. I took three more concubines after you. You told me yourself you expected me to fuck them. You didn’t even blink when Shirah demanded you share me. How’s this different?”

“You’re the Lord Marshal. Every Lord Marshal since Covu—”

“Don’t gimme that shit. You an’ me an’ him, Li. This is about you an’ me an’ him. Not the Lord Marshal and his concubines. Not the Lord Marshal and the fucking Bride. Not even the Lord Marshal and his Warden. Tell me why this hurt you so bad when the idea of me fuckin’ Avvy and Zetty and Nadie didn’t bother you at all.”

“I expected him to be faithful to me,” she whispers.

“I fuck him. Hell, you encouraged that.” It took nearly a year of being with us before Hardy could stand for me to touch him during sex. Months more before he’d touch my dick or ass, and it’s only been in the last few months that he’s relaxed enough for me and him to fuck. Li was instrumental to each stage, coaxing him along. I assumed she was doing it for his benefit, but maybe I got it backwards.

“I expected him to be faithful to _us_ ,” she amends.

“His fidelity’s important t’you but mine’s not?” I ask.

I feel something in her break. Maybe at the idea of me being unfaithful to her. Maybe just because I’ve pushed and pushed and pushed and finally gotten to the root of her pain. “I want to be enough for him,” she sobs.

That’s it. We’re there. I cuddle her close and rock her until her tears dry cold and sticky on my neck. Then I pick her up and carry her back to bed. I settle her in the middle and slide in beside her, trying not to shake the bed and wake Hardy. She huddles against my side and I draw her to me, her head on my chest, her thigh across mine. Nice and tight. I listen to her breathing as it gets slow and even, and before she drops off, I whisper to her, “Whatever happened, you’re more than enough, Li. For both of us. Whatever’s lackin’, it’s in him, not in you.”

I feel her slide down into sleep, but not before she hears me. I hope the thought takes hold.

 

When I wake, she’s gone. But I can hear her thoughts, which are quiet and calm. She’s thinking about the freedom of the sea-birds as they soar above the surf. She’s focused on her breathing. The rise and fall of her legs. The coolness of the black sand under her bare feet. She’s running, the way she does every morning. Clingin’ to her routine.

I roll over and check on Hardy. He’s lying on his back with his arm under his head. His eyes are open; he’s staring at the ceiling.

“You talk to Li?”

He shakes his head. “She was gone before I woke up.”

“She’s just out runnin’.”

He nods. “I figured.”

“We talked some in the night, her and me.”

“How is she?” he asks, which at least shows he’s got his priorities straight.

“Still pretty fucked up. You got a long way to go, you want to win her back.”

He doesn’t say anything to that, and leaves me wondering if he does want to win her back. Pretty sure he does, or he wouldn’t be here. But if he does, he’s gonna have to make a better showing of it.

“Jack awake?”

“I haven’t heard her.”

That’s stopped meanin’ anything. Used to be that Jack would cry for us pretty much as soon as she woke up. But in the last few weeks she’s gotten tall and strong enough to climb outta her crib. So far she just gets up and plays with her toys or the hellhound, but she’s a Furyan an’ sooner or later, she’s gonna start exploring. Kia’s a good nursemaid, but she ain’t human, and the trouble an unsupervised two and a half year old can get into boggles the fuckin’ mind.

I slide outta bed and slip into the nursery quietly. Jack’s still sleeping, eyes closed, dark lashes perfect crescents on her flushed cheeks, round baby face peaceful. My little angel. I leave her sleepin’.

I poke my head into the bedroom on my way to the kitchen. “You want anything to eat?” I ask Hardy.

“Thought we were heading back this morning.”

Yeah, that’s what I promised Li, but now that I’m here, and she’s so fucked up, I’m seriously thinking about breaking that promise. Last time she was this hurt, I’d caused it, and Hardy was the one she turned to. Now that the tables’re turned, I don’t want to leave her alone. I want to be the one she clings to, the shoulder she cries on. Li almost never needs this kind of attention. She’s the one who takes care of us. I’m liking being the one taking care of her for once.

“Maybe later. Think we’d all feel better after some breakfast. Maybe give you two a chance to talk.”

Hardy rolls out of bed and onto his feet. He’s shed his vest in the night and is just wearing his briefs, which is all we usually wear at the beach. “I’ll help you.”

The little hab’s got a stock of concentrates, but I also brought a pile of provisions from Chef, who had apoplexy at the idea of Li goin’ away for several days and not eatin’ right. I set Hardy scrambling lizard eggs while I grill sausages.

“You think Li’ll let me explain?” Hardy asks as we move around the kitchen.

“Dunnow. You got an explanation?”

“Yeah,” he says.

When he doesn’t elaborate, I ask, “Is it a good one?”

“No. It’s the truth, though. I heard what she said to you about wondering whether Ythane was the first. She was. I need Li to understand that, and why I was thinking . . . what I was thinking.”

“What were you thinkin’?”

“I was thinking she could be our fourth. Hoping it, more. She smells right. Don’t know if you’ve gotten close enough to smell her, but she smells right. Not like Li smells, but good.”

“I haven’t. Even if I had, I wouldn’t have stuck my dick in her. Or thought about bringing her into our family without talkin’ about it with Li and me first.”

Hardy scrapes the eggs around in the pan and hangs his head. “I fucked up, even thinkin’ it. I know that.”

“Here’s somethin’ you may not know. You’re probably thinkin’ that Li’s mad at you right now because you betrayed her. Or ‘cause she was humiliated by the way she found out. But you’re wrong. She’s not mad, she’s _hurt_. She’s hurt as deep as she can be hurt. ‘Cause she thinks there’s somethin’ wrong with her. She thinks you did it ‘cause she’s not enough for you.”

Hardy takes the pan of eggs off the heat and sinks down until his back is against the counter. “She thinks that?”

“Yeah. It true?”

Hardy rubs his hand through his hair, spiking it until he looks like an angry hellhound. “Not the way she thinks.”

“But it is in a way?” I push, ‘cause if it is true, it won’t be Li that can’t forgive him. It’ll be me.

“I love her. I’ll always love her. I never thought about leaving her. But she’s stopped . . . she’s not . . . she’s not Furyan . . . I thought there might be someone else, just for me.”

“So you thought you’d give Ythane a try,” I say flatly.

Hardy shakes his head.

“You stupid fucker,” I growl at him. “You _knew_ what you were signin’ on for with us. You knew from the beginnin’. You keep tellin’ us you’re not a dog, but you follow your sniffer to the first Furyan bitch in heat and mount up to see if she might be better’n what you already got. Li tries so hard to make you feel like you’re not second best, and this is what you do? You don’t deserve her—”

“I know I don’t!” Hardy pushes off the counter and roars at me. He stops, suddenly, and staggers back a step.

I follow his line of sight to where Liaden’s standing in the doorway. Her cheeks are flushed from her run, but otherwise she’s as pale as a shell. “Jack’s crying,” she says softly.

Hardy bolts past me. For a second I think he’s running away, but he turns the other way, into the hab, to get our daughter.

Maybe he ain’t completely worthless.

I don’t ask Li if she heard us. I take it from her mind. She didn’t hear the whole conversation. Just the last bit. The worst bit. Where Hardy admitted what she fears the most. I hold my hand out and she comes to me. Into my arms, into my heart. I hold her and brush her hair back from her face and kiss her forehead. “I fucked up, too,” I tell her.

“By letting the sausages burn?” she asks.

Fuck. I rescue them and then wrap her back against my chest. “By makin’ you accept him without figurin’ out whether he was fuckin’ worthy of you.”

“You didn’t force me to accept him. I made my own judgment.”

“Looks like both of us were wrong.” I assumed that because Hardy was like me in so many ways, he’d be like me in this way, too. So in love with this woman he’d do anything rather than hurt her; appreciative to his fucking bone marrow of the miracle of her returnin’ his love.

She doesn’t say anything, but I feel the thought crawl through her mind. _Not wrong. He wants more because I’m not enough for him_.

“Li, I won’t let you keep thinkin’ that.”

She strokes my cheek. “My love, you are a wondrous man, and can do many impossible things, but preventing me from thinking my own thoughts is not one of them. I told you, I need to feel my way through this.”

“I heard you, but I seen what’s crawlin’ around in your head an’ I’m tellin’ you it ain’t right. You’re more than enough for me. More than enough for him—”

“But maybe not more than enough for both of you,” she says quietly.

I press my forehead to hers. “Hate him for makin’ you feel that way.”

“And I love you for trying to understand how I feel.” She tips her face up so I can kiss her. “Shall we finish breakfast? I promised Jack a swim this morning and I want to do it before the tide turns.”

“Sure.” We both know this ain’t the end of it, but more’n enough’s been said for now.

Hardy brings Jack, freshly diapered, curls combed, pink cheeks scrubbed, into the kitchen as Li and me are setting the table. I’ll give him points for this: no matter what’s going on in his particular fucked-up fuzzy little head, he never lets it affect the way he is with Jack. He’s a great daddy.

Li mag-clamps Jack’s high chair to the end of the table. Hardy and me trade eye-rolls. Jack hates the chair. Hardy and me don’t see the point. Li’s the only one who thinks gettin’ Jack used to eatin’ in it’s worth the fight. But it’s not a battle either of us is up to this morning. Hardy silently slides Jack into the chair.

Her howl of protest splits the morning air a moment later.

“Jack, if you can’t sit in your chair like a big girl, you can’t eat breakfast with us,” Li says calmly.

Jack stuffs her fist into her mouth and glares rebelliously at her mother.

“Chef sent your favorite sausages with Daddy,” Li says to placate our little Furyan. “If you’re patient for a minute, TooDaddy will cut them up for you.”

Hardy sits down next to Jack and cuts up sausage as though he was performing brain surgery, he’s concentratin’ so hard. Li moves around him, settin’ out beakers of rowela juice. It hurts to see how careful she is not to brush up against him. I know he notices. I see him flinch every time she reaches across him. I shouldn’t feel sorry for the fucker, but I know if it were me, her distance would be slaughterin’ me.

“I was thinkin’,” I say to Li once we’re all sittin’ an’ enjoyin’ Chef’s sausages. “Maybe Hardy and me’ll stay down here with you. We won’t get in your way. You do your thing. Enjoy some quality time with the terror. We’ll do some fishin’. But when you’re ready to talk, we’ll be here.”

Li knots her hands together and rubs her fists under her pointed little chin. I can feel the ‘no’ forming in her mind.

“We’re still a family, right?” I say. “I don’t know nothin’ about family. Nothin’ but what you three have taught me. But I know families don’t run away from each other.”

Li lifts an eyebrow, but unknots her hands and starts eating her eggs again.

“Or you can tell me to fuck off.”

“No, Jack,” Hardy says when my baby parrot opens her mouth. “See Mama? Mama doesn’t say ‘fuck.’”

My baby parrot cocks her head to the side and examines her mother with bright-dark eyes.

Li wipes her mouth before she says, “I know and have used that word on occasion. Shall we not genderize Jack’s vocabulary before she’s three?”

Hardy hangs his head. I can almost see him think, _I can’t do nothing right_.

“Jack,” Li says. “Mama doesn’t use the word ‘fuck’ because it’s not very descriptive. Do you know what ‘descriptive’ means?”

Jack shakes her head.

“Descriptive means that I like to use words to paint pictures. Like when we use Uncle Jarone’s paints. We make pictures everyone can see. I like to use words that way.”

“Jack paint,” my baby says.

“Yes, you paint very beautiful pictures. Do you remember the pictures we painted of the clouds?”

Jack nods eagerly.

“So if I was describing those pictures, I would say that Jack painted pictures of fluffy, white clouds filling a dark blue sky. Do you see how that’s descriptive? You can imagine what the picture looked like, even though you can’t see it right now.”

Hardy and me both watch Li with our mouths open. She’s taking this moment to explain descriptive language to our two year old? In the middle of all this?

“And if I had to respond to Daddy’s original question,” Li continues. “I would say that I would never be so rude to my husband, but I would remind him that he promised me time alone.”

Fuck, she’s killin’ me.

“We’ll give you time,” Hardy says. “Riddick’s right. I don’t know anything about families, either. Never been in any family but this one. But I made a mistake. I stopped talkin’ to you. I ran away. Don’t make my mistake, Li.”

Li folds her lips together. Fortunately, she don’t say the first thing that springs to her mind. Which makes me wince. “When I’m with you, I say things I shouldn’t,” she says. “Things that may make it hard for us to be a family in the future. I don’t want that. I want to be able to speak about this calmly and with distance.”

“Distance,” Hardy repeats. “That sounds a lot like you’re telling me what you wouldn’t tell Riddick.”

Li smiles a little. “I would no more say that to you than to him. As you’ve both pointed out, we’re still a family. Families treat each other with respect.”

Hardy winces, which Li intended. She’s right. She’s not ready to talk with him about it. Not without carvin’ him up.

“We’ll get outta your hair today. Finish your breakfast,” I say to Hardy. “We’re goin’ fishin’.”

“I hate fishing,” Hardy grumbles.

“Jack fish,” our baby offers.

“Today you swim with Mama,” I tell her. “Tomorrow you can come fishin’.”

That becomes the plan. Li leaves me and Hardy to clean up while she takes Jack swimming. The beach here ain’t netted like Zibon’s beach, but the shallows, where the big predators can’t come, are safe enough. After we’ve tidied up, I stand on our porch and watch my wife and daughter swim. Li couldn’t swim at all when I met her, and she’s still not the most confident in the water, but she’s mostly wading, while our fish of a child paddles circles around her.

I’m not so engrossed in watching my girls that I don’t hear the skimmer land, or Faz come up behind me. He’s just wearing a chestplate, so he don’t clank the way the Necros did when I first brought ‘em to Furya, but he still walks like a soldier, heavy-footed, and I can hear him a klick away.

He pauses beside me on the porch. “Good morning, Lord Riddick.”

“’Mornin’, Faz.”

“Tykkas awaits in the skimmer, my lord. He objected to the Lady Marshal being here with only one guard, but he did not wish to anger you. He says he will return to Zibon with you if you require.”

Liaden’s fan club. I shake my head. “Tell him he can come out. He really wants guard duty in the hot sun, he can have it.”

Faz turns and waves at the skimmer. I hear Tykkas crunch across the sand but don’t turn to look, still watching my girls. They’re playin’ a game we play a lot with Jack: toss the guppy. Li can’t throw Jack as far as Hardy or me, but that’s not preventin’ either of them from enjoying the game. Li’s smiling. Jack’s laughing her wet little head off. Li’s focused on what she’s doing: playing with Jack, keeping her balance against the current, watching for anything larger than a minnow. Her mind’s nice and calm. No screamin’. No hatred. No hideous insecurity. She is thinkin’ about Hardy, though. She’s wondering what it would be like if it was just the three of us: her, me and Jack.

 _You’d miss the fuck outta him_ , I say into her mind. Talkin’ into Li’s mind is an effort. Like runnin’ a marathon. But sometimes it’s worth it.

Maybe I shouldn’t be botherin’. Maybe I should let her take these thoughts to their natural conclusion. Kick him outta our family. I wasn’t kiddin’ when I told him he didn’t deserve her – he doesn’t. But neither do I. We’re both the luckiest fucks in the universe, even if I’m the only one who appreciates it at the moment. An’ I don’t believe for a second that Li will be okay after he’s gone. It won’t make her hurt any less. Fuck, it’ll probably make her hurt more, ‘cause she’ll regret it forever.

Li turns in the water and looks up the beach at me. Jack takes her mother’s moment of inattention to climb up onto Li’s shoulders and jump into the waves from there.

 _My love, I had intended that_ time alone _meant time alone with my thoughts._ She can’t think into my mind, but if she focuses, I can hear her thoughts like they’re on broadcast.

 _Yeah, fair enough_. I turn away from the water and let Li have some peace.

Turning back to the little hab, I find Hardy standin’ behind me in the doorway. Unlike the legionnaires, he’s not heavy-footed, and the fucker can sneak up on me when he tries.

I’m the only one who didn’t notice him, though. Both Faz and Tykkas have their blasters levelled at him.

“Fellas, we don’t got a verdict yet, so executin’ him’d be premature,” I say.

Tykkas snarls. “The Furyan woman gloats her conquest of this scum. She says she will ask to share you next, Lord Riddick. Let me defend the Lady Marshal’s honor—”

“What’d you say?” Hardy growls. He’s dressed only in briefs. With no weapons to hand. But when two blasters were pointed at him, he was completely relaxed. Until Tykkas mentioned Ythane.

“I said you dishonor the Lady Marshal—” Tykkas begins.

Hardy shakes his head. “Before that. What’d you say about Ythane?”

Tykkas sneers. “Furyan bitch—”

“What’d she say?!” Hardy snaps.

“She has told anyone who would listen about your Furyan fornication. My wife had to endure the details of how you took her on her hands and knees, in the blood of the Antyons you had killed—”

Hardy roars and springs for Tykkas. He’s faster than either guardsman and has Tykkas on the ground, slamming his head into the sand, before I grab him around the waist and haul him off the Necro.

“Stop it!” I shout at him.

“I’m not a dog!” Hardy howls. “I never done that!”

I pin him against the porch’s support, with my forearm across his throat. “Stop it! He’s only repeatin’ what he’s heard. You opened yourself and Li up to this. Take it, find out what she’s sayin’ and put an end to it!”

“How do you stop spit?” Hardy shouts at me. “How do you stop wind?! She’ll never forgive me if she hears that—” He sags in my grasp suddenly. “She’ll never forgive me,” he repeats in a whisper.

I fist my hand in his hair, the way I’ve held him during our roughest play. Deliberately, as a reminder of who I am and what I am to him. “Stop thinkin’ like that or you’ve already lost. You know what you did. An’ you know what you didn’t. Li’ll believe the truth if you give her time. She knows you.” When he shakes his head, I tug his hair. “She knows you! We both do. So ease the fuck down.”

He grabs my wrist. “You believe me.”

“’Course I do. I know what that reminds you of.” It reminds him of the time I raped Li. That’s the position I held her down in and he knows it. We never do it doggy-style. Not once in over two years. An’ that’s because of him, not because of Li or me. He hates any reminder of how I hurt her, when he wasn’t there to protect her.

“I didn’t do that. I would never do that. She climbed on top of me when I was—” His voice breaks. “I should have stopped her. I should have pushed her off. I just wanted to know if she was the one for me—”

I ease back from him. “Yeah, you told me. Tellin’ me again don’t make it sound any better. You’re still a dumb fuck and you still don’t deserve her.”

Hardy grabs his hair with both hands, tugging it as he sags against the column. “I know. I know.”

“If she can forgive you, I can, too. So stop whining. C’mon, fish are all gettin’ away.”

“I don’t want to fucking fish,” he groans.

“Too bad. Li loves fresh fish. We’re catchin’ ‘em for her for dinner. Might make her smile.”

“Nothing I do makes her smile.”

I roll my eyes. “You’re such a fuckin’ whiner. I promise you some fish’ll make her smile. I’ll even let you take the credit for whatever we catch.”

Hardy pushes me back a step with his palm in my chest. “I’ll catch twice as many as you.”

That’s better. Like every male Furyan I’ve met, he’s a competitive fucker, and he responds best to a challenge. I turn to the two legionnaires. Both have holstered their blasters, but Tykkas is still looking murderous. “If you’re here to guard Li, she’s down in the water, not up here on the sand.”

“Yes, Lord Riddick.” Faz snaps to attention. He grabs Tykkas’s breastplate and drags the other legionnaire down the beach.

“The hardest thing about all this?” I say to Hardy. “Ain’t gonna be gettin’ Li to forgive you. It’s gonna be gettin’ everyone else to.”

Hardy shakes his head. “I don’t care about anyone but Li.”

“Ythane’ll be real disappointed to hear that.”

“I don’t care about her disappointment.”

“You don’t care about her, but you wanted to bring her into our family? What were you thinkin’?”

Hardy shakes his head. “I don’t know. She smelled right. She seemed . . . I don’t know. She was nice to me. Playful. Seductive, I guess. Like Li was in the beginning.”

“In the beginning,” I repeat. “Before she had Jack. That what this is all about? Li’s pregnant again and pretty soon she’ll have another baby to worry about. No time to be playful and seductive? So you figure you’d audition a fuckin’ replacement?”

“No,” Hardy groans. “No one can replace Li.”

“Too fucking right. Li _is_ playful, and seductive. All you gotta do is make time to play with her. Yeah, she’s busy with Jack, an’ she’ll be busier once Dray’s born, but we _asked_ her for that, remember? She didn’t want to get pregnant. She fuckin’ hated being pregnant with Jack. She’ll always be a concubine first in her head, and that’s not about bein’ a mother. It’s about bein’ a lover. Yours and mine. She _wants_ to be with us that way. All you gotta do is ask.”

Hardy shakes his head. “You don’t understand.”

“Maybe I don’t. Maybe I don’t understand ‘cause you’re makin’ no fucking sense. You been with her for more’n two years. You must know how to ask her for what you want by now.”

Hardy rolls off the support column, turning his back to me. “Fish’re getting away,” he grumbles over his shoulder.

I follow him inside to retrieve spears and nets and buckets, but as I do, I have to wonder whether I’m missing something, or whether he really doesn’t know how to ask Li for what he wants.

 

We catch a mother-load of fish. So many we have to send most of ‘em back to Chef with Faz and Tykkas, when they finally get the message that Hardy and me ain’t leavin’. This beach ain’t fished often, but that’s not why we catch so many. Hardy wades recklessly deep, given how many predators there are in these waters, and hauls in nets so full they nearly drag him off his feet before he can get them to shore.

I understand what he’s doin’. Fuck, I’ve done it myself. Thing is, killin’ yourself don’t make anything better. Don’t make the guilt any less. I think about callin’ him on it. Li would. She hates either of us takin’ stupid risks. But I decide against it. Let him wear himself out. Might make it easier for him to talk to Li.

Even as I’m thinkin’ it, my own complicity surprises me. It ain’t that I’m takin’ his side. He don’t even really have a side to take. He admits he did wrong, and his explanation is about as stupid as Jack’s when she’s gotten into serious mischief. Yeah, I follow my senses, too. But not into some other woman’s pussy. At some point, the big brain says ‘no,’ no matter what the little brain’s sayin’.

But Hardy’s always been so fucked up about sex that it’s beginnin’ to make a weird kind of sense to me. What I don’t know is whether it’ll ever make sense to Li. She’s always been more understandin’ of his problems than I have. She was willin’ to accept him even if he couldn’t be her lover. She endured weeks of frustration while he healed enough for them to actually fuck. An’ then there was his whole thing about comin’. He couldn’t do it if either of us was lookin’ at him. Not for months. That made for some convoluted positions. I remember her during that time. No matter how bad it got, she never pushed, never gave up. Just kept tryin’ and tryin’ until he finally got there. I’d like to think she loves him enough to be like that with him now, too, but I don’t know. She’s too hurt.

So I gotta be the one that doesn’t give up on him.

Maybe that’s what it really means to be a family.

 

Bein’ a family also means havin’ fish guts thrown at you, evidently.

After Hardy and I pack up the extra fish an’ send ‘em back with Faz and Tykkas, we sit on the porch and clean the half-dozen blue-stripes and argers we’ve kept for ourselves. I’ve got Li and Jack in my sights. Li’s put up one of the U.V. awnings we keep on the beach and she an’ Jack are building sand-castles under it. They’ve got a whole city goin’. Towers and tunnels that they’re decoratin’ from a pile of shells and shiny pebbles they’ve collected. My wife’s a woman of many talents, but I didn’t realize she coulda been an architect until today.

As I’m admiring Li’s skills and smiling at Jack’s sandy little butt as she crawls around their city, something wet splats against my cheek.

Hardy chuckles.

I turn my head and see the grey knot of fish guts he’s thrown at me oozin’ on the sand beside my thigh.

“The fuck?” I growl at him.

His chuckling gets louder. “Not very descriptive. Can’t see a picture from that.”

I scoop up the guts in a handful of sand and drop it all into the flash bag I’ve set by my knee. “You miss?” I ask, nodding at the flash bag.

“Nope,” Hardy says. He’s got his own flash bag, so I’m not seein’ why he’d need to use mine, but I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt before I throw somethin’ back at him. Pretty much guarantee what I throw back’ll be sharper’n what he’s thrown at me. “You were looking too pleased with yourself.”

I reach over and slap him across the back of the head with the fish I’m cleaning. Nice, fresh, firm fish results in a satisfying _smack_. “Now we both stink of fish,” I tell him.

He chuckles again, and doesn’t retaliate.

“Things weren’t goin’ too bad,” I say. “Had some reason to be pleased with myself, before this.”

Hardy looks off into the middle distance, but I don’t think he’s seein’ the jungle. “Guess so.”

“You had a complaint, all you hadda do is say.”

Hardy shrugs and focuses on the fish he’s cleaning. “It’s easy for you. You’re in Li’s head. You know what she’s thinking. I gotta guess all the time. I’d give anything to hear her thoughts the way you do.”

“Couldn’t have been any mystery what she’d think of you fucking another woman.”

Hardy pulls the spine and ribs out of his fish in one smooth motion. “She don’t want me anymore, not sure why she’d care.”

I slap him with my fish again. “You lost whatever pea brain you had? She _does_ want you. Why is a fuckin’ mystery to me, but the fact of it’s not. We were together the day before you left. How could you think she don’t want you?”

“You fucked her. I fucked you. She didn’t even kiss me. Not the first time, either.”

“So go in the fucking middle. Or be with her alone. You know I got no problem with that.”

Hardy carves his gutted, deboned fish into two fillets and sets them in a growing pile on a cool tray in the sand between us. Picks up another. “She does. We haven’t been together like that since she got pregnant.”

I didn’t realize that. I haven’t been one-on-one with Li much during the last few months, either, but it hasn’t bothered me the way it’s clearly bothered Hardy. Maybe ‘cause I was around the first three months of her pregnancy with Jack, when she was so sick she didn’t get out of bed some days. So I knew what to expect. Still, that ain’t an excuse. “That’s what this is about? You think she don’t want you anymore ‘cause she’s spent the last three months puking instead of screwing? So you turn to some girl you barely know who smells right?”

“Wasn’t like that.” Hardy sighs and decapitates the fish. “I was thinking about it. And maybe I encouraged her, or didn’t discourage her when I should’ve. But it wasn’t like that.”

“What was it like?”

Hardy lifts his head and sights into the middle distance again. “If I tell you . . . you can’t tell Li. Not all of this. I’ll tell her . . . what I can. I’ll come up with something, but she can’t know about all this. She’ll think I’ve gone backwards. That I’ve undone everything she’s done. I don’t want her thinkin’ that. It’s not her fault, what happened.”

“Tell me, then. I see into her head, not the other way around. But if it’s gonna hurt her—”

“It won’t. Not the way you mean.” He shakes his head and works his lower lip between his teeth for a minute before he continues. “Ythane ain’t much of a hunter. I mean, she’s got some basic skills, but she don’t know much. I had to show her everything. We set off late the first day ‘cause she didn’t have the right clothes or weapons. I had to help her get everything together. I went to the Stelae ‘cause I knew one of the prides was there, but we didn’t even track nothing that night because we started so late. Soon as I made us a camp, she started in. ‘Oh, I need a bath.’ ‘Oh, I need help drying my hair.’ Like that. And maybe I should have told her to fuck off. Maybe that’s what you woulda done. But she was sweet with it – playful – and her scent was everywhere and she smelled good. Not like any woman I’ve ever smelled except Li.”

Hardy jabs the point of his filleting knife into the packed sand several times, then wipes it off before he continues. “Nothing happened that night. She slept in her bunk. I slept in mine. Yeah, I thought about it, but I didn’t do nothing. I’m not like that, you know I’m not.”

I nod. That’s something in his fuck-up that’s never made sense to me. Hardy’s not submissive, not like Li, but he’s not sexually aggressive, either. He came to me and _asked_ if I’d share Li with him, instead of tryin’ to take her away from me. He always waits for one of us to initiate sex no matter how horny he is. I just can’t see him making a move on the Furyan girl.

“Second day we left the skimmer and I taught her to track Antyon. Recognize their tracks and spore. Their different moults and what they mean. We spent a lot of that day laying up in trees and counting their numbers, ‘cause I knew you’d want to know how the pride was doing. She . . . touched me. Rubbed up against me, you know. While we were watching. An’ I didn’t tell her ‘no.’ We didn’t kill anything but a lannias that I cooked for dinner. Second night it was the same thing. ‘I’m sweaty, I need a bath.’ ‘You need a bath, too’—“

I swallow a chuckle because Hardy only washes when Li’s around to wash him. He’s not fastidious and he lets himself get fucking filthy when he’s out hunting. So whatever the girl’s ruse, she was probably right.

Hardy gives me a narrow eyeball, like he knows what I’m thinking, before he continues. “I found a stream so we could wash. I didn’t get naked. Just my shirt and boots. She took off all her clothes like I wasn’t even there. And she’s beautiful, you know. Smooth skin and nice tits and a round ass and she knows it. She’s splashing me and pressing up against me in the water and I didn’t stop it. I didn’t touch her, but I didn’t tell her to fuck off like I should’ve. She touched my back like she didn’t mind my scars.”

“No one minds your scars but you,” I growl, because I’m tired of this particular refrain. Yeah, Hardy’s back is a mass of scars. Yeah, he’s got more on his wrists and ankles. He was fucking crucified. And whipped. And beaten. And starved. And tortured. And I’m sorry for all of that. But I thought he was over it.

Maybe he’ll never be over it.

Hardy clears his throat uncomfortably. “Maybe, but she didn’t. She asked me about them, but I didn’t tell her. Just said I’d fought in a resistance. She called me brave and tried to kiss them. I didn’t let her. I got out and dried off and went to bed. But it was early and I couldn’t sleep. She came in after she’d dried her hair by the fire again. The smoke and her scent were everywhere and I was so turned on. I wanted it so bad . . . not her, really, just _it_. You know? Sex. I tried to wait until she went to sleep. She climbed up into her bunk and I could smell her. Her . . . her sex was wet and I could smell it. It smelled so good, I couldn’t help it. I started touching myself. I was trying to be quiet and quick, but I’m used to it with Li and she likes to go slow and I guess Ythane heard me. She climbed down and got into my bunk. I should have told her ‘no,’ but she wasn’t waiting for anything. She got on top of me and tried to put it in her—” Hardy chokes.

I wait, not sure what to say. I know he has problems with penetration, more with Li than with me. But I’ve seen and touched his dick enough to know that the cause of his problems is that he actually broke his dick – ruptured it, which I thought was just a myth until I met him – jamming it into a catch-tube for the Gallinites’ sick breeding program.

“It wouldn’t go in,” Hardy whispers, staring fixedly at his half-cleaned fish. “I couldn’t do it. It was like that tube. I couldn’t . . . she finally kind of squashed it in and started riding me. I was getting sick, throwing up in my mouth and swallowing it back down so she wouldn’t know. I didn’t want her to think it was her. I couldn’t kiss her or anything ‘cause she would have tasted it, so I pushed her back onto my knees and rubbed her like Li taught me. So she’d come quick. Once she was done, I crawled out of the bunk and told her I was going to wash up. I went back to the stream and threw up until there was nothing left in me. Then I climbed up into a tree and slept. I got the bug-bites to prove it.” He reaches back and pulls his briefs down to show me his right cheek, which sports a line of six red welts where some blood-sucker found him tasty. “She woke me up the next morning by throwing rocks at me. She barely spoke to me. She didn’t want to learn nothing more about hunting, so I just tracked down the four loners, killed them, field-dressed their carcasses and brought them back to Zibon.”

I rub my forehead without thinking about it, feel the wet smear and wipe the fish blood off with my forearm. “Fuck,” I whisper, not sure what else to say.

Hardy chokes a laugh. “That still ain’t very descriptive.”

“You need to tell Li all of that.”

Hardy shakes his head. “She’ll think I’m screwed up again—”

“She’ll know you’re screwed up, and for a good fuckin’ reason. No matter what stupid thoughts you were thinkin’, your body’s so loyal to her that you couldn’t do it. You puked instead of comin’. She’ll want to know all that, you dumb fuck. Don’t you think that’ll make a difference to her?”

“You don’t know what it was like at the beginning—”

“Yes, I do. Li don’t keep any secrets from me. I seen everything in her head. The trouble you had with Li wasn’t like that. Your body didn’t reject her. You were never sick. And Li never had to climb on top of you. Fuck, what was Ythane thinkin’? She didn’t have any business doin’ that.”

“It wasn’t . . .” he trails off, because there’s no doubt it _was_. “She didn’t know. I think she thought . . . it was seductive or something.”

“She didn’t know ‘cause she didn’t take any time to know you. Don’t make excuses for her. Not to me. She could see from your scars you’d been through hell. She didn’t take the time to find out what that meant. Sure, she’s young, but she’s only a year or two younger than Li was when she came to me. You can be damn sure Li took the time to know me and what my scars meant before she spread her legs for me.”

“Ythane’s a—”

“Don’t give me the ‘she’s a Furyan’ line. I heard that too often. Everyone uses it as an excuse for not thinkin’.”

Hardy flicks another knot of fish guts at my face, but this time I see it coming and duck. “I was gonna say, Ythane’s a hunter, not a healer, the way Li is. But to be honest, Ythane ain’t much of a hunter, either. She didn’t catch one Antyon. Just got in my way for two of the kills.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t think you’ll be huntin’ with her again anyway.”

Hardy shakes his head. “You think she’s telling people . . . what she’s telling people to get back at me?”

“Probably.”

“I didn’t do it to hurt her. I didn’t mean to do any of it. I just needed to get away.”

“I understand.” And I do, finally. The whole fucking mess makes sense. It will to Li, too, if he can bring himself to tell her.

“Gentlemen.” Li’s clear voice brings my head up. She’s walkin’ up the beach towards us, hand-in-hand with our sand-covered toddler. She’s wearin’ a bathin’ robe. Soft, sleeveless thing that falls in layers to her knees. Pretty without revealin’ a thing. That’s somethin’ I’ve always liked about Li. She’s beautiful and she has a great body, especially her legs, which go on for fucking ever. She could make a mint anywhere in the galaxy showin’ herself off. But she never does. She never would. She’s modest to the core, my wife.

She’s spoken from far enough away to give us plenty of warning and by the time she’s within normal talkin’ distance, we’re both on our feet with the fish guts tidied away.

Well, most of them. Li’s dark eyes slide to the porch’s support strut before looking at me. Following her line of sight, I see the second lot of fish guts that Hardy threw at me have stuck to the column. I flick them into the sand with my finger. Somethin’ll eat ‘em.

“Jack would very much like you both to see her city before we have lunch,” Li says.

Hardy drops down on one knee so he’s level with our girl. “You build a big city?” he asks, and all the warmth that left his voice when he was talkin’ about what happened with Ythane is back. Maybe that more than anythin’ decides me. I’m not gonna let Li kick him out. Even if it takes her years to forgive him, he’s part of our family. He’s Jack’s TooDaddy. He’s Li and my lover. He’s our third. He needs us, even if he don’t always understand how an’ why. And we need him.

“Jack city,” Jack crows. She grabs Hardy’s hand and tugs. “Come see, TooDaddy!”

“Okay, I’ll come see. It needs a name, Jack,” he says, letting her drag him down the beach.

“Jack City!” Jack repeats, clearly bewildered by her parent’s stupidity.

So am I. He’s drowning in guilt for _thinkin’_ of doing wrong, when he should be ragin’ at the wrong done to him.

I put a hand on Li’s arm before she follows them. “Sweetheart, we need to talk.”

“Yes?”

“Not here. You okay to come back to Zibon with me for a few hours? Hardy can stay here with Jack. She’s due a nap anyway.”

Li looks puzzled but nods. “Of course.”

She never says ‘no’ to me. Never denies me anything she can give. I hope she can give me this.

I take her hand and walk with her from the soft sand to the hard-pack, where Jack City sprawls under its gossamer canopy. It is impressive, even more for bein’ built by our little sand worm. I see Li’s hand in the delicate arches that cross each tunnel, the towers with shells for turrets. Reminds me of her garden. I nudge Li with my elbow while Jack points out each feature to Hardy. “Maybe I should have you redesign Zibon,” I say.

Li shakes her head, but she’s smiling. She leans into my side, warm and relaxed. “Jack City is pretty but probably not very comfortable to live in. I think the Weavers have done a fine job of making Zibon liveable.”

I agree with her there. Necros are used to living in tight spaces – although they had a huge Armada, personal space on the ships was cramped. Tirea and her crew put that knowledge to good use in designing our Hab.


	5. Chapter 5

We’re back at our comfortable Hab two hours later. As much as I like escaping to our beach house, I’m glad to be back. The tension Li shed while she was playin’ with Jack came back in fuckin’ spades as soon as she was forced into close quarters with Hardy. For his part, he wasn’t doin’ anything to help himself, focusing on Jack and barely sayin’ a word to Li while we made an’ ate lunch. We left him bathin’ our sandy little worm.

I’m also glad to be back ‘cause I get twitchy if I’m away from Zibon too long. I never had a home before. Never thought I wanted one. But now that I got one, it’s gotten under my skin like a tick. I don’t like to be away for long.

I’m rethinkin’ that pretty quickly when Vaako meets our skimmer in the hangar with a portable lens and a face as long as an Eschar’s ass.

“Highest priority,” I tell him. He reels off a list of six pissy little problems he could solve in his sleep. I delegate the resolutions without blinkin’. Vaako’s an odd duck. When I’m around, he acts like I’m in his way half the time. When I’m gone for more than five minutes, he acts like the fucking universe is ending. He wants to be my go-to, but he don’t want to be in charge. A true beta. Weird as fuck for someone who never even wanted a side-kick.

“Next priority,” I say. Three more problems. Three more quick solutions. We work down to low priority as we walk up through the Hab. We’re almost done, and almost to our quarters, when there’s a squeal from the corridor behind us.

“Li!”

I turn and look. It’s Gvenne, the giggly one. Could be worse. If it was Avvy or Cays, the explanations’d be longer. With Gvenne, we might not have to explain at all. Her partner Leto is Hardy’s huntin’ buddy. If Hardy talked to anyone, it’d be Leto. Maybe that’s where he was when I was turnin’ the Hab upside-down lookin’ for him. Gvenne may know as much as I do.

Gvenne rushes up to Li and hugs her fiercely, an explosion of light blue fabric and dark blonde curls. I like the way the Necro women dress now. Soft and pretty. Much better than the undead femme fatale look they had goin’ with the Armada. They were sexy in those dresses, but creepy, too. I don’t mind a certain level of creepy, but I draw the line at necrophilia.

Li hugs Gvenne back, but resists when Gvenne tries to drag her off. “We’re just back for a few hours. Vennie,” Li says. “So Riddick can deal with business.”

Gvenne throws her arms around Li again. “You can’t go now. Not while Hardy’s missing and that terrible girl is saying such terrible things.”

“Hardy ain’t missin’,” I tell her, which gets me a raised eyebrow from Vaako. “He’s at the beach with us. We’re workin’ it out. When we finish workin’ it out, we’ll be back. And then we’ll take care of Ythane.”

That gets me a raised eyebrow from Li, and a headful of questions. I shake my head at both of them.

“Maddeningly opaque,” Vaako says to Li. She nods. I’m not sure what he means and there’s nothing in Li’s mind to explain. She’s not puzzled, though, so it must mean somethin’, which is funny ‘cause she an’ Vaako almost never see eye-to-eye about anythin’.

“If you’d keep your nose out, I wouldn’t have to be opaque,” I tell Vaako. He’s been squirrelly about this from the start, and I’m beginnin’ to get the sense that he knew more than he told me. Which I don’t like at all. If Vaako kept things from me as a way of strikin’ at Li, it won’t be his weddin’ we’re celebrating. It’ll be his funeral.

“My apologies, Lord Marshal,” he says, as immediately contrite as Jack when Li scolds her. “I spoke to Hardy only out of concern for you.”

That stops me in my tracks. “You spoke to Hardy when?”

Vaako swallows. “Before you left.”

“When?” I growl.

“After I met with you. While you were swimming, if you swam when you usually do.” His tone carries more than a little censure and I know that’s because my lack of schedule frustrates him as much as it frustrates Li.

Fuck him. I bow to no man’s schedule, either.

“What’d you say to him?”

Vaako slides his black gaze to Gvenne, who is still standing with her arms around Li. It takes Gvenne a moment to realize that Vaako’s starin’ at her, and what that stare means. She squares her shoulders – no gigglin’ now, she’s all steel and grit in Li’s corner. My wife’s made herself some good friends. “I won’t repeat anything you say. Not even to Leto, although he’s beside himself not knowing where Hardy is and what’s going on. Li needs her friends beside her right now, not you unfeeling men.”

I swallow a chuckle, ‘cause it feels like I done nothing but feel for the last two days. Hardy certainly hasn’t. But that’s nobody’s business but ours, and everyone’s stuck their nose waaay too far into our business already. “Hardy ain’t in the best frame of mind right now, either,” I say. “You and Leto want to join us at the beach for dinner, might be a relief for everyone. We got plenty of fish. I’ll tell Faz to bring you down in a skimmer. That sound good?”

“I’ll tell Leto,” She nods and releases Li reluctantly. Leaves only after kissin’ Li’s cheeks several times an’ promisin’ she’ll see us soon.

I reel Li in against my side, so she ain’t alone. “What’d you say?” I repeat to Vaako, after Gvenne’s outta earshot.

“I could tell you over dinner,” Vaako says.

Fuckin’ _prima donna_. “This ain’t about me. If it was, you’d be welcome.”

Vaako shifts his gaze to Li. “It’s about you. As usual.”

He’s goin’ there? Now? I growl at him. “You really don’t want me to make it about you.”

Vaako purses his mouth, although he should be used to my growlin’, and says, “I told him that a rumor had reached my ears about his liaison with the Furyan girl during their hunting trip. I indicated that I had told you about the rumor and that the Lady Marshal would soon hear of it if she hadn’t already.” Vaako gives Li a little bow. She nods back, and that pretty much sums up their relationship. All polite on the surface, but underneath, there’s not much that’s friendly.

“An’ you had this little word with him outta concern for me, huh?” Normally I’d believe that. Vaako don’t want anything to happen to me ‘cause he doesn’t want to lose his own position. Self-interest is the best motivator. But I’m not feelin’ the love at the moment. He didn’t do it for me, or for himself, or for any reason other than he saw a chance to stick a knife in Li.

“Anything that undermines your authority, Lord Marshal—”

I cut his off his b.s. mid-stream. “Only thing that undermines my authority is you shootin’ off your mouth when I’d already taken care of it.”

I swear he’s poutin’. “Lord Marshal—”

“Stop talkin’. You’ve said enough.” Li shifts against my side and I know without lookin’ into her head that she thinks I’m bein’ too hard on Vaako. She never has tried to defend herself against any jab he’s taken at her, ‘cause she still feels guilty for killin’ his conniving, traitorous bitch of a wife.

Not sure I’ve ever felt guilty about anything, except hurtin’ Li. Definitely not about killin’ someone who deserved it.

“Lord Marshal, I swear to you—”

“Yeah, you got my best interests at heart. I know.” I soften my tone ‘cause Li’s getting really restless and Vaako’s lookin’ like he might cry. “I appreciate you’re tryin’ to protect me, but I’m tellin’ you, stay out of this. Anyone asks you about it, we’re workin’ it out. I know the truth of what happened an’ when it comes out, Ythane ain’t gonna look so shiny. Or Hardy so black. So if you wanna talk to anyone about anythin’, have a word with her and tell her to shut the fuck up and keep her head down, ‘cause when we get back, it’ll be more than a word I’m gonna have with her.”

Li’s looking up at me with her mouth open, and she’s restraining the questions in her head from pourin’ out only by an effort that’s makin’ her shake.

Vaako firms his chin and nods. “Yes, Lord Riddick.”

“We done?” I ask mildly.

“Yes, my lord.”

“Good. I’ll come back and check in tomorrow. Anythin’ urgent between now an’ then, signal the beach hab.”

“Yes, my lord.”

I reach out with my free hand and grip his shoulder. “This ain’t about me, but it’s takin’ it’s fuckin’ toll, okay?”

That’s as close to an apology as he’s gettin’. Not even sure I should be givin’ him that, but it works. He relaxes and grips my forearm.

“Forgive me if anything I said or did undermined you. After our meeting . . . I thought you’d discounted the rumor.”

“You ever known me to discount anythin’?”

Li and Vaako exchange a look before they chorus, “Yes.”

I give ‘em each the glare that deserves. “C’mon, Li.”

 

At our quarters, I tell Caden we’re not to be disturbed, and then have to wait while Nazya clings to Li through multiple reassurances that Li’s okay, Hardy’s okay, Jack’s okay and we’re working it out. Nazya finally clears off when Li begins pressing her lips together – Nazya knows Li’s tells as well as I do.

Li comes to me as soon as the door snicks shut behind Nazya. I stroke her cheek with the backs of my fingers. “I know you got a million questions. Hardy’s gonna have to answer most of ‘em.”

Li tips her head to the side as she looks up at me. “Is this like when he had to ask me ‘the question’ himself? You know he never did.”

‘The question’ was whether Li could share herself with Hardy and me. “You guessed it anyway.”

“Riddick, please, this is so hard. Please just tell me.”

“This is what I can tell you, sweetheart. Hardy didn’t initiate nothin’. You coulda guessed that, the way he is with us.”

Li nods. “I thought he might be different with her. But I’ll admit what she described didn’t sound like him.”

“He was thinkin’ about it, he’ll admit that. But he didn’t start it. Didn’t finish it, either. He didn’t come. Threw up while she was on him. You can guess what it reminded him of. He ran away afterwards and slept in a tree.”

“What?” Li’s face crumples. “Oh, no. Not Gallin.”

“You need to ask him about the rest yourself. You need to hear the whole thing, from him.”

Twin tears spill and track down Li’s cheeks. “I’ve been punishing him.”

I wipe away her tears with my thumbs and kiss her forehead. This was how I hoped she’d feel. “I know you have. I’m not sayin’ he didn’t earn it. An’ you still gotta deal with the why of it. Why he was even thinkin’ about it. But I’ve seen what you’ve been thinkin’ and you need to know it wasn’t like that. He’s a wreck not just ‘causa the guilt, but also ‘cause three nights ago he was back on Gallin, tryin’ to force himself into that tube again. You’re the only one who’s helped him with that. You brought him back. Don’t turn away from him, Li. He needs you.”

She shakes her head. “No, no,” she whispers. But she’s not actually denying anything. Not in her head. It’s sinking in, just the way I hoped it would.

“That’s why I brought you here, sweetheart. I know you ain’t ready to forgive him. I know we got things to work through. I’m askin’ you to try. Not just for him. For us. We’re a family. I don’t want to lose that. I don’t think you really do, either.”

“I-I haven’t made any decisions.”

“I know. You’re lettin’ the fear and hurt think for you.”

Her chin trembles and two more tears streak down her cheeks. “I can’t seem to get past it, my love. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

I kiss her forehead again. “You don’t need to apologize to me, Li.”

“No, I need to apologize to him,” she says brokenly.

“Don’t worry about that. He don’t want an apology. He just wants a chance to explain. T’see if you can forgive him. Listen to him, sweetheart. That’s all he wants. That’s all I’m askin’.”

She nods. “Can we go back now, my love? I’m desperate to see him.”

“Yeah?” I stroke her shoulders. Talkin’ wasn’t the only reason I brought her here. I coulda told her all this in the skimmer. But gettin’ her back to the beach, back to Hardy, so the two of them can begin healin’, is probably more important than gettin’ laid. Although my nuts don’t agree at this particular moment. Her vulnerability has done what it always does to me – I’m half-hard already and definitely ready for more.

“Oh, do you—?”

So much flashes through her head. She’s realized what I want. She ain’t adverse, but she’s torn. She wants me. I wasn’t wrong when I told Hardy she’s a concubine first in her head. She wants to please me, but she _is_ desperate to get back to Hardy. She wants pleasure and comfort and to forget everything in sex for a while. She’ll do anything I want. She’s remorseful. She feels responsible. She didn’t listen. She ran away. She believed the worst, when she knew the pieces didn’t fit. She lashed out. She hurt Hardy deliberately. She ignored what she could see he needed in order to make him share her pain . . .

I wrap her tight in my arms. “Let’s head back. You need to be with Hardy. I can wait. You know what a patient man I am.”

She gives a small laugh. “You are a paragon of patience, my love.”

“However much it hurts to hear what he’s got to say. Whatever you gotta do to work through this, I want you to remember one thing. You’re never alone, Li. Never. I’m right here.”

She looks up at me. Tears still swim in her grey eyes, but her eyes are clear, not that hollow, blasted look she gave me after she first found out about Hardy and Ythane. Or last night’s bleak, haunted stare. She’s comin’ back to me. To us. “Always?” she asks.

“Always,” I tell her.

“No matter what?”

“No matter what, wife.”

 

Something I shoulda learned by now? Always get laid when you have the chance.

When we get back to the beach, there’s no chance for Li to listen to Hardy, ‘cause half of Zibon’s descended on us. We coulda fucked for hours and it wouldn’t have made any difference. Where’d they all come from? The stone landing-pad’s so crowded with skimmers, I gotta park ours in the jungle. Vents’ll be full of bugs by morning.

The crowd that’s gathered is too big for our little hab, so they’ve moved out onto the sand around the porch. Jack’s crawling around under a group of portable chairs that’ve been set up in the sand. Not getting’ her nap. She’ll be fun later. Hardy’s sittin’ in a circle that includes Gvenne, Leto, the healer, Cays, Cays’s girl Talti, my ex-concubine Avalyn, her Furyan husband, Cawl, and Cawl’s adult son, Rosseir, who tracked his father down last year and stayed when he saw the Colony. Tirea’s baby, Lores, is trying to crawl after Jack, but Jack’s too fast for the younger boy and he’s beginning to whimper. I don’t see either of his parents, so they’re probably inside our hab.

Li and me stop at the edge of the circle, when all eyes turn to us and conversation stops. I pick up Lores and tickle his poutin’ lower lip so he giggles instead of cryin’. I put him up on my shoulders, where all the kids like to sit, before I catch Gvenne’s eye. “Didn’t realize I’d invited so many for dinner,” I say.

She half-rises out of her chair. “I’m sorry, Lord Riddick. Cays was seeing to Leto’s leg when I told him where Hardy was. She wanted to come and then we bumped into Tirea while Cays was getting her things and it just snowballed. I’m so sorry.”

I shrug. “The more the merrier. Guess I better gut some more fish, though.”

“Jules is catching more,” Hardy offers. He looks better, not as drawn or destroyed. He’s sittin’ with his back to the hab. Leto’s next to him, broken leg propped on another chair. Leto’s got his arm around Hardy’s shoulders. Hardy’s never seemed like a man who needs or wants friends, but he has them all the same. He still looks anxious, though, and after his eyes search my face, he looks at Li.

She takes a deep breath and leaves my side to sit in a spare chair next to Hardy. He tentatively reaches for her and she takes his hand. His shoulders sag, the tension draining out of him. Slowly, as each muscle unlocks, he leans into her. Li snugs her shoulder against his and whispers to him, a whisper I hear in her mind, “Riddick told me. My poor darling, I’m so sorry.”

“Me, too,” he whispers back, under the current of renewed conversation. “I fucked up so bad, Li, but I swear you let me, I’ll make it up to you. I’ll be better—”

“Shh, my heart.” She brushes a kiss over his cheek. “We’ll talk later.”

He nods and grips her hand like a lifeline.

Sanjula, who used to be a navigator with the Armada and then a concubine to my watch commander, Daray, has turned into the Colony’s best fisherman. She returns with a dozen more blue-stripes and a bucket full of the giant golden crustaceans that sometimes gather in the rock pools. Must be breeding season. She’s got Daray and Tirea’s husband, Sirel, with her. Tirea’s emerged from the hab with drinks for everyone and by the time the fish’re cleaned, it’s getting on towards dinnertime and feelin’ like a real party.

The big gold crawlers are best barbequed, so I leave the circle of our friends and head ‘round the back of the hab to where we keep the kettle. We used to have open fires on the beach, but now that we got little ones crawlin’ around, we keep the fire safely contained and out of reach. I’m just pullin’ the cover off the big kettle drum when I find Hardy beside me. Fucker really is quiet when he wants to be.

“Yeah?” I got no illusions he came to help me with the kettle. It ain’t that heavy and he ain’t that helpful.

“You told her?”

“Only enough to make her understand she shouldn’t be blamin’ you for somethin’ you didn’t do. You need to tell her the rest. All of it, not just what you think she wants to hear. She deserves the whole truth.”

“I did think about it,” Hardy chokes. He’s still drownin’ in guilt, poor bastard.

“I know you did. You gotta deal with that, you and Li. But I won’t have her refusin’ to forgive you for somethin’ you didn’t do. And I won’t have either of you runnin’ away again. We’re gonna stick together and work this through. The three of us. We clear?”

He nods. Doesn’t even try to argue the way he usually does when I give him an order.

Together, we roll the kettle out front, a short distance from the circle of chairs, so everyone can enjoy the light and heat of the fire as the sun sets, but it’s not a threat to our toddlers. Li joins us with Jack on her hip while we build the fire, stacking branches from our stock of dry wood as Jack directs. Her direction’s a little haphazard, but it’ll still burn.

While the wood burns down to good cookin’ embers, we skewer the crawlers and lay the fish fillets in a grilling rack we can set over the top of the kettle. Chef can cook, no question. His food’s the best I’ve ever tasted. But there’s somethin’ special about fresh meat cooked over an open flame. We grill a pile of crawlers and fish. Tirea and Sirel bring out a huge platter of tubers and greens Tirea’s roasted in the hab’s little kitchen, and it all still disappears.

Afterwards, with our bellies so full, no one can think about nothin’ but lying around the fire. Cawl’s son’s brought his funny-shaped guitar and he plays some tunes the girls sing to while the sky darkens and the stars come out. After the sing-along, we spread a couple of blankets on the sand so the kids can crawl around without gettin’ too sandy.

I end up lying propped on a folded chair, sucking the last bits of meat out of the crawler’s legs, drinking Chef’s malty beer, with Jack dozing on my chest. Li’s lying next to me. She’s holding Hardy, who is stretched out between us. She’s got him cuddled down real tight, his head on her breast while she strokes his hair. He’s half-asleep, but he keeps touchin’ her lightly, stroking her waist, pullin’ her hips that little bit closer, like he’s afraid she might disappear. They still haven’t talked, but enough’s been said that they’re healin’ each other now instead of hurtin’.

Cawl’s sittin’ on my other side, with his own beer and his own crawler legs, and his own complicated family next to him. Rosseir, who’s strumming his guitar so happily now, went off the deep end for a while when he found his father had replaced his mother with a woman a year younger than him. A woman who was tryin’ to give his father a new family. Avvy hasn’t been able to carry to term yet, and the Healers, who are better with death than they are with life, still don’t know why. But she keeps trying and her belly’s rounding again, I see as she reclines on her elbows next to Cawl.

“Gotta hand it to you, boy,” Cawl says to me in an undertone, so the dozen others lyin’ around us having their own booze and conversation don’t hear. “You’ve managed to hold it all together.”

I don’t know if he’s talking about the Necros or Zibon or Li and Hardy. He’s been on hand to watch every challenge I’ve faced, and throw it in my face when he thinks I’m fucking up. Like he actually is the grandfather Li calls him and I should fuckin’ listen to him. “Yeah,” I say.

“Tripod,” he says. “Pretty stable. ‘Cept when it comes to people. Too bad they ain’t like furniture.”

Life would be easier if Li and Hardy were more like furniture, but they wouldn’t be as fun to fuck. I chuckle at that thought, put down the crawler leg I’m sucking on and reach out to stroke Li’s cheek. She smiles, against my fingers and in her mind. Her mind’s calm and quiet again, the leaves and flowers of her mental garden shinin’. I rub my hand over Hardy’s fuzzy head before picking up my crawler leg again. “You deal with two of ‘em. Got any tips?”

Cawl snorts. “I was gonna ask you.”

Most of my tips would involve sex, so they ain’t gonna be useful to Cawl. Instead I say, for Li’s benefit, since I’m pretty sure she’ll be listening to me. “Just trust ‘em to do the right thing in the end. No matter how long it takes.”

“Yeah?” Cawl asks. “What if they don’t?”

I smile to myself and kiss the forehead of the angel sleeping on my chest. This little product of Li’s body and mine, of the love me an’ Li an’ Hardy share. Already so much like all three of us. Some day she’ll go through this, in her own way. Hope she can find the same things we have. “They will. That’s why you’re with ‘em in the first place.”

Cawl don’t say anythin’ and I glance over to see him lookin’ at Avvy with his heart in his eyes. I smile, take a last sip of beer, stretch my arm behind my head and enjoy what I got. It ain’t always like this. Hasn’t been and won’t be. But moments like this make the rest worth it.

“Lord Riddick,” Tirea, who has her own little angel asleep on her shoulder and number two fillin’ her belly, slides across the blanket to kneel close to my feet. “I had a thought about what we might do to expand Zibon.”

“Mmm?” I’m not really interested in talkin’ about this tonight, when I’m so relaxed, but there’s still so much hill to climb before my family’s whole and happy again.

“I actually got the idea from Jack’s sand-castle.” She nods her sleek blonde head at the beach, which the dark has swallowed, and where the tide will be swallowing Jack City. “Those bridges? What if we built a few close to Zibon, spanning the Anzoa? We could house people over the river without casting too much of a shadow on the fields. I’ll talk to Li about where best to place them. That would keep the new housing near Zibon without undermining the cliff face.”

That’s been the central problem with expanding Zibon. We built the Colony into a cliff-face, easily defended, close to all the resources we need. But also easily undermined by too much expansion; the last thing we wanna do is destabilize the cliff.

“Sounds good to me,” I say lazily. Pretty much anythin’ would sound good to me at this moment, though. I glance over at Li an’ Hardy, ‘cause it seems t’me that this would be a good time for them to talk, if they’re half as relaxed as I am.

They’re more relaxed. So relaxed they’re unconscious, actually. Hardy’s fallen asleep wrapped around Li, which she wouldn’t allow in front of other people if she wasn’t asleep herself, clutchin’ him tight to her breasts. I smile at them and let them sleep.

When I look back at Tirea, she’s lookin’ at Li and Hardy, too. Her look’s more sad than soft, though.

“Li hasn’t hunted in months,” Tirea says.

I frown at her, puzzled by the nonsequitur. “She don’t need to. We got plenty of hunters.”

Tirea nods. “Of course . . . I didn’t mean that she needed to hunt. Only that she hasn’t in a long time. She’s strong, I know. She runs every day. But that’s not the same. Do you really think she can defeat the Furyan?”

“What?” I sit up, nearly dropping Jack into my lap. My baby stirs and whimpers but settles back to sleep when I lay her down on the blanket next to Hardy and stroke her head.

Tirea looks alarmed and scoots back across the blanket.

“’Rea, what’re you talkin’ about?”

“I’m sorry,” she says, pressing her lips together. Her gesture’s not the same as Li’s. She’s not losing patience. She’s scared of me. Always has been, no matter how gentle I’ve been with her. I just have that effect on some people.

“It’s okay. You can tell me. I won’t blame you.”

“The Furyan Ythane’s challenged Li for Hardy. I assumed you knew and that’s why you brought Li down here.”

I shake my head. “Li wanted to get away.”

Tirea closes her eyes briefly. “I understand why. I was there when Ythane confronted her. Li didn’t know. She looked like she’d been stabbed in the heart. That horrible girl.” Tirea glances at the entwined couple beside me. “Li seemed happy tonight. Relaxed.”

“Yeah, they’re workin’ it out.”

“So Hardy did sleep with the Furyan girl.” Tirea sighs. “I hoped she was lying.”

“Sleep, no. Have sex willingly, no.” I’m still not sure I’d go all the way to callin’ what Ythane did _force_. Guess I’m like Hardy in that way, since he won’t call it that, either. But jumpin’ a man too traumatized to be able to say ‘no’ ain’t far off.

Tirea’s blue eyes bulge in the firelight and I hear Cawl grunt next to me like he’s been hit in the stomach.

“Wondered about that,” Cawl says.

“You know about Gallin?” I ask Cawl.

“Enough. Probably heard the same rumors as you.”

“They’re true,” I say. “The scars you can see, let’s just say they ain’t the worst.”

“If he didn’t . . .” Tirea says haltingly. “I don’t understand why Ythane would challenge Li for him.”

I shrug. The why of it don’t matter much to me. If I had to guess, I’d say that Ythane’s hurt and humiliated by the way Hardy was with her, but instead of takin’ it out on Hardy, she’s fixed on her rival, Li. Give the girl a little credit – she may not be much of a hunter, but she’s not stupid – she must realize she’s got no chance in a fight with Hardy.

But she’s got a chance in a fight with Li.

Tirea’s right. Li hasn’t hunted in a long time. Hasn’t fought or even trained to fight in longer.

I don’t want her takin’ this fight. I know she’ll want to. Li’s still a Daixian at heart and she’s fought for us before. But not for years, and that last fight, against Shirah, nearly killed her. She’ll be angry with me if I forbid her from acceptin’ Ythane’s challenge. But she’ll forgive me. Eventually.

“I don’t care why. It ain’t gonna happen. Only thing Ythane’s gonna accomplish is gettin’ herself kicked out of Zibon,” I say.

Everyone around me nods, and pretty much everyone still awake has gathered in to listen while we’ve been talkin’. More people stickin’ their noses into our business. I know these are our friends. I know they’re down here to support Hardy and Li. But I’ve had enough of everyone stickin’ their nose in.

“Must be past curfew,” I growl. I know it is. I knew when curfew passed, but we were havin’ a good time and I didn’t want to disrupt the party by makin’ everyone head back to the Hab. “So I guess you’re all stayin’ the night. There are enough habs down the beach for everyone. You can use my override code t’get in.” Which I’ll be changing in the morning.

There are a couple of funny looks around the circle, but everyone nods and gets movin’. There are times when the Lord Marshal business gets stale an’ I wonder if I shoulda just sent everyone on with Toal to the UnderVerse instead of lettin’ ‘em come to Furya with me an’ Li. But then there are times like this, when bein’ the Lord Marshal has its advantages.

 

Bein’ the Lord Marshal don’t mean anything in my own bedroom, though. When I wake them, Hardy picks up Li like she weighs as little as Jack. He carries her straight into our bedroom, into our bed, without pausing to do more than brush the sand off their feet.

While I’m tuckin’ Jack into bed and givin’ Kia a bowl of water, he’s takin’ off their clothes, lyin’ Li back in the pillows, pullin’ a cover over them and kissin’ her like nothin’ happened. Deep an’ soft, the way she likes. His furry fuckin’ chest tickling her nipples. She winds her arms around his neck. She ain’t gonna reject him. Lucky bastard. I _knew_ I shoulda gotten laid when I had the chance.

I take a spare blanket outta the storage cubby in the nursery and head back into the great room. Settle down on the couch. They need to be alone. They talk durin’ sex, which I don’t understand, but they do. So I’ll give them time to talk, and fuck, and hope that I get to join them in my own damn bed at some point tonight.

I’m not really tired yet. So I settle deep in Li’s mind, not just skimmin’ her thoughts the way I usually do. I’m immersed in her, feelin’ what she feels, seein’ what she sees. I don’t do this often, ‘cause it means my mind is open to her, too. But she don’t get too nosy, usually, and tonight I think she’ll have enough on her mind without pokin’ around in mine. Anyway, Li’s seen the worse my head’s got to offer, and still never flinched.

Hardy’s rolled Li underneath him. He’s lyin’ between her legs, rubbin’ himself against her. He don’t usually initiate sex, but once they’ve started, he’s dominant with her. They do it the way he wants. It’s the only part of their sex that turns me on. The rest of it? All that rocking, slow kissin’ and touchin’? Don’t do much for me. I like _motion_. I like intensity. I like to know I’m fuckin’, not lying there inside her while we _talk_ for an hour. But it turns Li on. She loves his tenderness as much as she loves our rough play.

She opens herself to him, lifting her knees around his hips, and he enters her immediately. He’s not havin’ any trouble with penetration now. In fact, he’s so hard he has to ease off ‘cause she’s not ready for all of him yet. Hardy’s a big boy, which made gettin’ used to him a challenge for me, too. But, hey, I’m up for any challenge.

Li is, too, and she’s not backin’ down just ‘cause he needs her too much. She rolls her hips so he’s seated in her up to the point of his rupture. Then she squeezes him, slowly, a real gentle pulsing that echoes the way he’s throbbin’ in her. She does this every day, several times a day, keepin’ her internal muscles as toned as the rest of her. I grin into the darkness. I can attest to the efficacy of her exercise routine. Fuckin’ amazing.

Hardy groans and slides his hands under her. One hand into the small of her back. The other cuppin’ the nape of her neck. This is the way he usually holds her at the end, when he fucks them both to glory and oblivion. Li knows his tells as well as I know hers. Knows he needs release, and probably will need it a couple of times before they’re done. He’s as needy as he was when he first came to her.

An’ Li gives. Just like she always does. She works him with those powerful internal muscles. Strokes him inside and out. Sliding her hands all over him. Kissin’ him deep, suckin’ and nippin’ on his neck and shoulders. He groans like he’s in pain and she keeps checkin’, lookin’ into his eyes, to make sure he’s okay. He looks back at her, his eyes black with need and love and guilt. She takes it all and gives him all that boundless love back.

He comes with just his head wedged inside her. Groanin’ so loud I’m surprised he don’t shake the hab down. Good thing the bedroom’s soundproofed. She coaxes him and encourages him through his climax, stroking his back and kissin’ his face while he sucks the side of her neck. He don’t usually leave marks on her – he’s too gentle for that – but Li smiles as she feels the faint burn of the hickey. She wants to wear his marks.

With his seed slickin’ her and her body more open from their fuckin’, she pulls him deeper, and cradles him as he relaxes. He’s still hard and she remembers this, too, from when they were first together. His rupture’s messed up the circulation in his dick an’ sometimes he stays hard even after he’s come. Li’s always liked the sensation of him so hard but not eager to fuck. She works him all the way into her and holds him there, so deep, so full.

He releases his tight hold on her and slides up onto his forearm so he can look down at her, comin’ up off her so cool air licks down between their bodies. She knows what he sees, ‘cause she’s seen it in my mind many times. She knows she looks tousled and fey and unreal, with her eyes so dark and wide and her lips bruised red. She knows she looks so fuckable and she smiles when he groans and kisses her and his heavy, hot body collapses back down on hers.

She holds him tight and lets him talk to her. She doesn’t push, and he tells her everything. More’n he told me.

He tells her about the confusion of bein’ attracted to a woman that wasn’t her. He tells her about the shame and embarrassment – an almost childish sense of humiliation – of bein’ caught with his dick in his hand when Ythane climbed down from her bunk and pulled the cover off him. He tells her about what Ythane said to him while she was tryin’ to get him in her, how she told him his dick was the funniest shape while she was jammin’ it in and how he couldn’t answer her ‘cause his mouth was full of bile. His voice breaks and then his breath breaks and she kisses his cheeks as they get wet and she holds him so tight, inside and out. And he tells her about how he bucked under Ythane while she was comin’ ‘cause he was chokin’ and Ythane reached down and gripped his throat and all he could think of was bein’ collared in that chair like a dog while the sexless mechanical suction of the tube milked him and he nearly drowned in his own puke before he pushed Ythane off him and ran.

Li kisses and holds him and whispers to him how much she loves him and how sorry she is until he quiets.

“I should’ve told her ‘no,’” Hardy whispers miserably.

Li knows exactly why he didn’t. Why he couldn’t once they were in the throes, so conditioned by the Gallinites’ breeding program. Why he didn’t at the beginning, when a woman he wanted showed an interest in him he thought Li had lost.

“I should have told you ‘yes,’ my darling,” she whispers back, not because she’s worried about anyone hearin’, but because she wants him to feel intimate and safe with her. “It’s my fault as much as it is yours, and Ythane’s fault more than either of ours.”

“She didn’t know,” Hardy says. It ain’t like Hardy to find excuses, and Li knows as well as I do that he’s doin’ it ‘cause he still feels guilty.

“She couldn’t help but notice that you were retching, my darling. Believe me, that’s not something any woman would fail to notice.” Li strokes the back of his neck, his scarred shoulders, and cuddles him close. She doesn’t say the rest of what she thinks. That the girl was so selfish in her pleasure, so bent on getting what she wanted, that she didn’t care what was happening to the man under her. No more than she cared about the damage it would do to his family when she revealed his infidelity so hurtfully and publicly.

“I don’t—“ Hardy begins. He stumbles over the words and Li kisses him until he finds the right ones. “I don’t know why I can’t tell you what I want. I can talk to you about everything else.”

Li knows, but she doesn’t think tellin’ him will help. “I had a thought about that,” she whispers, and this is a different whisper, a soft bedroom whisper, seductive instead of safe. “I’ve told you before about my betrothed, Hanuel. How he used to write me letters.”

“Yeah,” Hardy whispers back. “Dirty letters.”

“Some of them, very. I thought you might write to me, too. Whenever you wanted. Whatever you desired.”

“I’m no good at writing,” Hardy says.

“Hanuel didn’t write much. Some of his letters were a single sentence. Shall I tell you what one – the best one – said?”

“Yeah,” Hardy says.

“Four words, scratched into the bark with the tip of his knife. It said, ‘ _my mouth, your cunt_.’”

Hardy jolts, then chuckles and settles back onto Li. I doubt he’s ever heard her say that word – I haven’t, not even when we’ve been playin’ our roughest games – and it turns him on. When she squeezes him, he rolls his hips and she moans as his thick length slides within her.

“I can do better’n that,” he whispers into her ear, and then he does, and it is better than anything Hanuel gave her, ‘cause their love was never consummated. An’ never tested.

 

He withdraws after the third time, which Li is quietly grateful for because she’d do anything rather than tell him to stop, but she’s more than sore. Guess I’m not gettin’ any tonight after all. She holds him until he falls asleep and rolls onto his side. Then she rises and comes to find me.

She kneels next to the couch and I push back the blanket and slide up onto one elbow to look at her. “You okay?” I ask, reachin’ out to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. She seems like she is, but her mind’s gone so quiet, so still, like a pool of deep water, it’s hard to tell.

She nods. “Would you take a walk on the beach with me before you come to bed?” she asks.

“Sure.” I’d go anywhere with her.

She gets a shift and I put on briefs so neither of us get bug-bitten in places we might regret. Then we head out into the moonlight.

On nights when Prokris isn’t up, Furya’s moonlight is silver. Li likes those nights best. But both Hardy an’ I prefer these nights, when the reflected light from Furya’s mother planet gives everything a crimson cast. The ocean’s black under that ruddy light, and we let the warm, dark water lick our ankles as we walk along the beach.

“Neither you or Hardy would articulate it this way,” Li says after we’ve walked for a while and talked about nothin’ more important than Vaako and Halle’s wedding, which Li heard about from Gvenne while we were eatin’. “But Ythane raped him.”

I don’t say a man can’t be raped, ‘cause I know first-hand a man can. That’s somethin’ both Hardy and I had to get past, since we both spent time in slam and that’s where we were exposed to that particular brand of violence. This is different. That was clear. Painful and humiliatin’, but not confusin’. This is as messy and convoluted as the time I raped Li. That nearly tore Zibon apart, too.

“Yeah,” I say. “Not sure everyone would agree, though. If they didn’t know Hardy.”

“Those who know him will understand. Those who don’t can be made to understand. She cannot stay in Zibon, my love. I won’t have him reminded every day of what she did to him. This will take him time to get past, even without such reminders.”

Li’s the expert on healin’ the poor bastard so I don’t argue. “I’ll kick her out soon as we get back.”

“I’ll need to be alone with him. More often than I’ve been of late.”

“I know. I’m okay with that.”

“You’ll need to make time to be with him, too. He doesn’t realize it, or maybe he’s just afraid of what you’ll think if he admits it, but he needs you, my love. I’ve watched his face while you’re together. He lets himself go more with you than he ever does with me. He knows you’re in control—”

“He don’t always like that.” Sometimes my dominance grates on him.

“No, not always. But sometimes he _needs_ it more than maybe either of you realize. He can let go completely because you’re there to catch him. It’s hard for him, and it’s taken him a long time to get there, and the timing of it has been awful while I’ve been so sick.” She shakes her head and I take her hand.

“No one blames you for havin’ mornin’ sickness, Li.”

“No, but it’s made me focus on myself instead of the two of you.” She takes a deep breath, lets it out and smiles. “I’m better now and if nothing else good comes of this, it has at least reminded me of my priorities. You and Hardy must always be first in my thoughts.”

“An’ Jack,” I say.

“No,” Li says. “That’s where I’ve gone wrong. I’ve been mother to Jack for more than two years now. I know how to balance her needs against yours. Only in the last few months has Hardy felt so neglected. That is because I focused on myself.”

I stop her, draw her into my arms. “Li, sometimes you gotta take care of yourself first.”

She smiles up at me. “Aereon would say that I must find a balance.”

Yeah, the Elemental would say that.

“I have lost my balance, but I will find it again.” She reaches up and strokes the side of my face. “But, please, let this be the last pregnancy.”

“Okay by me.” I don’t really care how many kids we have. Once I thought it would be great to have a dozen runnin’ around, but that was before we had Jack and I realized what a fucking force of nature a toddler actually is. ‘Sides, Hardy had a vision before Jack was born, of us walkin’ on this beach, hand-in-hand with our kids, a year plus from now when Dray can walk. In it, Li was pregnant again, and as soon as he told me about his dream, I knew she’d have twins, boy and a girl. That might be the end of our family. Or maybe that’ll remain a dream and it’ll just be the four of us. Either way, I’m fine with what I got.

We start walkin’ again, hand-in-hand, past the other beach habs, quiet and dark, where our friends are sleepin’, or doin’ whatever they’re doin’.

“I wanted to say ‘thank you,’ my love,” Li says. “I will do so more tangibly in a moment, but right now, I want you to know how much what you’ve done has meant.”

I shrug and put my arm around her shoulders. “Didn’t do much. Cooked some fish.”

“The fish was excellent.” She slides both arms around my waist and hugs me tight. “I meant what you did for me.”

I know what she meant. An’ I know why she’s grateful. Li’s tough, but she ain’t the most resilient. She’s more likely to break than bend. I’ve learned sometimes I have to make her bend a little, to avoid her breakin’. Makin’ her let us stay when she wanted to be alone. Makin’ her listen to Hardy’s explanation when she didn’t want to hear it. Those things may have bent her a little, but they’ve kept her from breakin’.

“I’d like to go back to Zibon tomorrow,” she says. “If you don’t mind. Not first thing. You promised Jack she could fish with you. But I’d like to be back in time for the evening meal.”

“Sure,” I tell her.

Li always phrases orders that way. ‘If you don’t mind.’ ‘If you’d agree.’ Like I wouldn’t take orders from her. My beautiful wife. My Lady Marshal.

We’ve reached the last hab, and pretty much the end of the beach. We’re gonna have to climb rocks if we want to walk any further, so I start to turn us around. But Li tugs my hand and leads me towards the last hab.

“Where’re you goin’?” I ask her.

“You’ve been incredibly patient, my love,” she says. “As well as incredibly kind. And you deserve a reward.”

“Yeah?” I like rewards.

She leads me to the doorway of the hab. It’s Zetty’s hab, so I’m pretty sure no one will be in it, and she and Tykkas won’t mind us usin’ it. Li turns to me, looks up at me with those big, dark eyes, pupils dilated in the red-lit darkness the way they do when we’re locked together in that dance we do so well.

But she’s already danced that dance several times tonight, and I remember how sore she was when they stopped. I like her to feel it when we’ve been fuckin’, but I don’t like her to _hurt_. That’s the point when the games stop bein’ fun. I kiss her forehead and tuck her hair back behind her ear. She’s left her hair loose ‘cause she knows I like to see it blowin’ around, even though it gets into her eyes. Just like she’s drawn me to this place where we can be together, just the two of us the way I wanted, even though she’s too sore for it to be fun for her.

“You puttin’ me first?” I ask her gently.

“Always.”

I kiss her forehead again. “I appreciate it. But I was in your head while you were with Hardy. I know how sore you are.”

Li grins, a slightly coquettish grin that she never showed anyone but me. This is one of those things that’s just hers and mine. She’s made sure we have a bunch of things like that, just like she has some with Hardy. So neither of us ever feels second-best.

She reaches into the pocket of her dress, pulls out a little tube of clear gel, and dangles it in the air in front of my face. “I thought of that.”

“What’s that?”

“Remember when you were having trouble, mmm, accommodating Hardy? Cays gave you something to help? Well, I stocked some here as well as at Zibon, just in case. It will do as well for me as it did for you.”

Worked great for me. I never felt another twinge after I started using it. It’s a lubricant, too, which is good, since I’m gettin’ harder by the second now that I know I can fuck her the way I want without hurtin’ her.

“You thoughta everything,” I say, lettin’ my voice drop to the low rumble she likes. Which lets her know that I’m ready to play. I tap my override code into the hab’s lens and hold the door open.

She slides into the dark hab, still looking up at me and I’m pretty sure it’s excitement and desire that’s dilating her eyes now, rather than the night. “Not everything, my love. I’ll leave how you’d like to take me entirely up to you.”

I growl and chase her into the bedroom.


	6. Chapter 6

We’re back in our own hab before dawn, with the towel we spread on Zetty and Tykkas’s bed so we wouldn’t stain their sheets. Li’ll replace it. She’s good with shit like that, and I’ve already seen her add it to her mental ‘to do’ list as we’ve walked back up the beach.

She hasn’t let me dispose of the towel, though, which makes me curious. Even more curious when she spreads it in our bed before sliding in and cuddling up to Hardy’s back.

“What’re you doin’?” I ask as I brush off my feet before climbing in beside her.

“In the morning, if you’re both willing, I’d like us all to be together. You, me and Hardy.”

“Ain’t you goin’ runnin’ in the mornin’?”

“No. I can run any time. Morning was merely convenient and sometimes a run helped with the nausea. I will reserve my mornings for the two of you from now on and go running in the afternoon before we have our baths. Bathing twice a day isn’t good for my hair anyway.”

I wouldn’t know, since I got no hair. But I like the idea that we’ll be fuckin’ in the mornings from now on. I wouldn’t have asked Li to change her schedule – Hardy probably wouldn’t, either – we both know how tied to it she is. That she’s willing to change it around, to put us first, without even bein’ asked, makes my chest tight.

I wrap myself around her, put my arm over her ribs the way she likes when we spoon. She takes my hand and tucks it around her belly. She’s hummin’, real low, so low I can’t hear it, only feel it when her diaphragm vibrates. She’s pressed her chest against Hardy’s back, so he’ll feel it in his sleep, and know he’s with her, and safe. That makes my chest tight, too.

“Love you, wife,” I whisper to her.

“And I you, husband,” she whispers back.

 

I love sex. Anytime, anywhere. I liked it well enough before I met Li, but she’s made me love it. Crave it, almost. She knows that, and she knows that since she’s planted the seed before we went to sleep, it’s pretty much guaranteed that when I wake up, I’ll make sure we fuck before anything else happens.

But since I’m not Lord Marshal in my own fuckin’ bedroom, what really happens before anything else is that I have to have another heart-to-heart with Hardy.

I wake up first, ‘cause Li’s turned over in her sleep and cuddled onto my chest and is snoring. She don’t usually snore, so she’s probably congested from all the cryin’ over the last few days. Sex’ll clear her out. Particularly a hard three-way. That thought has me smiling up at the ceiling when Hardy reaches over her and rubs my head.

“You awake?” he whispers.

“I would be after that even if I wasn’t.” Passive-aggressive fucker.

Hardy chuckles, real low so he don’t wake Li.

“I figure you heard everything last night,” he says.

“Yup.” Felt it, too.

“I didn’t tell you everything . . .” he trails off and the bed hitches from his shrug.

“I know why you didn’t tell me.” Same reason he wasn’t going to tell Li. Beyond the guilt, he’s ashamed. He was a little ashamed to admit what was done to him in slam. But he already knew it had happened to me, too, so that made it easier. He’s much more ashamed of what happened with Ythane. “I don’t care about the details. I just wanna make sure you get better, an’ I don’t do nothin’ that reminds you of what she did. But I figure Li’ll make sure of that.”

“It’s nothing like that, being with Li. Or being with Li and you. Never has been.”

“Good.” I’d like to say that’s because I’ve been careful never t’do anything that would remind him of Gallin. But the truth is that I’ve probably been a little careless – and a lot lucky – since I thought he would tell me ‘no’ if I did something he didn’t want. Now I’m not sure he would. “Li wants us to be together this mornin’. All three of us. You up for that?”

“Yeah. She’s not going running?”

“Nope. She says the mornings are for us now. She’ll go runnin’ in the afternoons.”

Hardy hums low in his chest. “She said that?”

“Yeah.”

“She, um, she never changes her schedule. Not unless you ask her to.”

Last time I asked her to change anythin’ was when I told her she couldn’t go huntin’ anymore, after that close call with the Rathmoz. An’ now I have to wonder if that didn’t start this particular ball rollin’. Hardy saw a lot more of her when they were huntin’ together. An’ it gave them more opportunity to fuck, away from me, away from Jack, away from the Hab an’ all the pressures and distractions there. So maybe I’m a little at fault, too.

“I didn’t ask her to. She says she’s puttin’ us first.”

Hardy rolls up onto his side and props his head on his elbow so he can look over Li’s head at me. “She said that?”

“You havin’ trouble hearin’ me this morning?”

“No, I just . . .” He trails off, and smiles down at Li. He takes a tangle of her hair off the pillow and rubs it against his lips. “She left her hair down last night.”

“She knows we like it.”

“She’ll need help brushing it out. It’ll be a mass of knots after what we did.” He sniffs. “What you did.” Guessin’ he can smell me on her. I can smell when they’ve been fuckin’, but when she’s been with both of us, I can’t smell the difference between his spunk and mine. Sharp-nosed fucker. “What we’re going to do.” Smile’s back in his voice.

“Well, you can do that.”

“I will.” Hardy brushes Li’s hair off her shoulders, balls it in his hand, lifts it off her nape and kisses her soft skin. She wakes with a little sigh and smiles against my chest.

“Good morning, my beloved men,” she says. She runs her hand over my chest, finds the scar under my nipple that’s sensitive and scratches it with the tip of her nail. I shake my head at her, but I’m smilin’. She knows exactly what turns me on, and she’s makin’ sure I carry through with her request from the night.

I take her hand and draw it down my body, under the sheet, to my groin, so she can feel she don’t need to work too hard. She chuckles, that low, throaty, bedroom laugh of hers. Pumps me as hard as iron. She circles my erection with her warm hand and begins strokin’ me. I close my eyes in pleasure. She knows just how I like it. Firm at the base, soft on the shaft, with a tug at the end. She works up and down enough that my head and her fingers get sticky, then she reaches down to tickle my balls.

“Fuck, Li. You wanna make me come before I get inside either of you?”

Hardy chuckles, the sound half-buried in Li’s skin. “That was kinda descriptive.”

She laughs. “Not enough. Describe to me what you would like this morning, my love.”

Easy. “Hardy’s in the middle. I wanna hear you both scream.”

Hardy grunts. “I will be screaming.”

“You got a problem?”

“Yeah, no lube here.”

“Li’s thoughta that.”

“Did you?” Hardy asks Li, sliding up onto his elbow so he can look down into her face. She smiles up at him, not the coquettish smile she saves for me, but a soft, loving smile.

Everything’s there, in her smile, in her eyes. I can see him fuckin’ melt. His whole body collapses over hers, drawin’ her into him. He kisses his way down from her temple, over her jaw, down her throat, to suck at the ridge of skin where the metal of her Collar is set into her neck. His big hands cover her, strokin’ down her chest to cup her breast, then sliding lower, circling over her soft tummy, to curve between her legs. He draws her back to him, and I can feel in her mind as he holds her open, his fingers rubbing in her, while he pushes into her from behind. He’s not usually this quick or forceful with her and it makes Li crazy. She starts squeezing him as soon as he enters her. The sweet pressure makes Hardy groan.

Before they get too far ahead of me, I reach across and fist my hand in Hardy’s hair. Hold him while I kiss Li and then crush her between us while I kiss him. She don’t mind – she likes being smothered by her two big men, as she thinks of us – and she never stops what she’s doin’ to my balls.

I don’t kiss Hardy often. Not that I got anything against it. He’s actually a good kisser. But I know he’d rather be kissin’ Li than me. This mornin’, I kiss him ‘cause I know it’s what he needs. What won’t remind him of Gallin, where he was never kissed. An’ you’d never know he’d rather be kissin’ Li from the way he reacts. He kisses me back hard, sucks on my lower lip and shifts enough that he can get his arm around Li, reach up and grab the back of my neck to hold me to him.

Li’s thought echoes my own. He’s desperate, starved for us, even though he was with Li just a few hours ago. He needs us to show him he’s forgiven. He needs us to remind him that sex is good and right and somethin’ he gives us, rather than somethin’ that’s taken from him. He needs to feel how much we want him.

I hold him and kiss him, touchin’ my tongue first to his lips, then his teeth, then his tongue as he lets me in. When I withdraw my tongue with a flick along his teeth, he chases my tongue with his. That hot, wet muscle presses against my lips for a second, then he’s pushing in, lapping my tongue with his, which he’s never done before. Giving, and givin’ himself over to us. Li’s still playing with my balls, but she’s got her other arm wrapped around his hips, her hand clenching his ass-cheek, and she’s pulling him deeper and deeper into her while he groans into my mouth. She lets go of my balls to stroke her fingers up my dick, then guides me between her legs, past the point of his entry, so I rub his thighs and the base of his cock with my shaft. His soft testicles are mashed between his legs and my dick and everything gets sticky and sweaty and so fucking good.

I pull his head back so I can take a breath, and while I’ve got him like that, bite my way down his throat. It feels different than Li’s. Hers is softer, more delicate. His is muscular under my teeth. Hardy’s shaved recently, but there’s still a fine stubble of hair on his throat, rough against my lips. I don’t bite hard enough to leave a mark, the way I would with Li, but that doesn’t seem to matter to him. He’s groaning and bucking with each bite until I have to release his head just to grab his hips so we all stay together.

“Don’t stop,” he begs.

“Never,” I promise him. “Li, where’s that goo, sweetheart?”

I lift off her enough that she can tell me. She gives me that coquettish smile that’s such a turn on as she reaches under her pillow and fishes out another little packet.

I give her a hard, hot kiss before I climb over both of them and push Hardy onto his side. He shifts with a grunt and a hiss as he pulls Li tighter to him. I know what it feels like to have her impaled like that. Everything throbbing and over-stimulated. It feels great and it hurts and you wonder if you’ll ever get your dick back but you don’t care. You just want to fuck her harder. He does, leaning across so she’s almost pushed onto her front. His thigh opens hers, knee planted deep in the mattress for leverage as he thrusts. He braces her with one forearm under her, his other arm still wrapped across her as he cups her sex. So possessive, so controlling. I feel Li surrender herself to him completely. However he wants her, he can take her. And he does, thrusting hard and fast, the kink of his rupture rubbing into that acutely sensitive area behind her pubic bone until Li’s trembling all over, panting, coming helplessly on him as he fucks her and fucks her.

He finally lets her collapse into the bed. She lies flat, palms pressed to the mattress, shaking, while he rubs his hand over her shoulders. “Li, you okay?” he asks anxiously. When she doesn’t answer him immediately, he twists his head over his shoulder to look at me. “Is she okay?”

“She’s fine. Do that some more. She loved it.”

“She did.” He sounds more than relieved. He sweeps her tangled hair out of the way and tenderly kisses the back of her neck. He hasn’t withdrawn from her and now he rocks in her, gently, but Li still gives a twitch of discomfort.

“Here. Time for this for both of us.” I break open the packet of goo, pour some on my dick and then hand it to Hardy. He pulls back, squeezes the goo on himself and slides back into Li almost on one stroke. Like he can’t bear not to be in her.

I know that feeling.

“You ready?” I ask him.

“Yeah,” he says.

I make sure he is with two well-gooed fingers before I introduce myself, but he ain’t lying. He’s as open and relaxed as I’ve ever felt him. I push just my head in, the way he penetrates Li, and let him get used to the heat and pressure and fullness, before I go deeper. He’s moaning before my third stroke. I roll my hips on the downstroke to stimulate his prostate. Each time I do, his whole body jerks. It’s completely different from fucking Li, but it’s good, too. I know from being in the middle myself that the sensations of being fucked like this are incredibly intense. Overwhelming. The sex is all around you, there’s no escape and it just keeps escalating and escalating. I see the flush rise up Hardy’s neck as I fuck him and he grinds himself into Li, not really thrusting but _screwing_ her, glorying in the tight, wet heat around his cock while I fill him and that almost electric shock runs through him with each bump-bump-bump of my cock.

I want him to feel overwhelmed. I want him to lose control. I want to break down every one of his barriers until he lets us so far inside he never doubts us again. I stretch across him, crushing him down into Li. She feels the extra weight in her post-orgasmic haze, but it just adds to her pleasure. I push my elbow into the pillows under his head so I’ve got some leverage. Suck the back of his neck while I run my free hand up and down his scarred back. Ythane’s not the only one who can make him feel like his scars don’t matter.

It’s touchin’ his scars that does it. Sends him over the edge. I feel him start to shake. So does Li. She reaches back and grabs his hip to hold him. I feel her push her hips up and arch her back so he has room to thrust if he needs to. He does, without any rhythm or measure. He’s not working with me or against me or anything that would require that much thought. He’s just fucking her as I’m fucking him, completely lost it in. I fist my hand in his hair again to hold him as I work my hips faster and faster, banging him continually, barraging him with sensation. I hear his breath stutter and break, and finally he sobs as he lets go and comes, shaking all over. He’s got no control of his breathing or his body or his emotions. That’s when I reach under him and pull him up against my chest instead of holding him down and growl in his ear as I pound those last few times into his slick, clenching, yielding ass, “We love you and we ain’t never lettin’ you go. Never.”

He shakes so hard it feels like he’ll fly apart. I’ve never said that to him before, and hearin’ it as he’s coming so hard, as I’m jerking in him and filling him with my own heat, undoes him. He puts his hand over his face as he cries.

When I can breathe and think again, I pull it away. “Don’t hide from us.”

Li squirms out from under him, turns over and holds her arms out. He curls into her, so his head’s against her breast. I withdraw from him and clean us both up with the towel, grateful for it and Li’s insistence now. She is the expert on healin’ him and I’m glad I listened to her.

When we’re both less messy, although it’s going to take a bath to really clean us up, I spoon against his back. Meet Li’s eyes over his shoulder. She’s holding him and stroking the back of his neck. Her eyelids are drooping and her mind’s foggy from the sex and our broken sleep. She’ll need a nap, which I guess means I get to play solo-parent this morning.

I follow Li’s fingers with mine as she strokes his neck. He’s still shaking, but I can feel him gettin’ heavier and heavier on her as he slides down towards sleep. “Whatever it is you need,” I tell him. “We’ll give it to you. Me an’ Li.”

He twitches a few more times before he falls asleep. Cradled between us. Safe. Li’s only moments behind him. When the two of them are deeply asleep, I ease myself away from them and go wash up, so I’m ready when Jack wakes, which won’t be long. I got a promise to keep to my baby girl, and I don’t break promises to Jack any more than I break them with Hardy or Li.

 

We don’t catch many fish, me and Jack. Fishing with Jack is really an excuse for a swim and a play. I bring a bucket and her little net but no spear. Once we catch two fish, we give up any pretense of fishing and just play toss the guppy until she’s had enough. I let the fish go after promising to tell Mama and TooDaddy about what a mighty fisherman she is. Then we go collect shells for Li’s garden.

When we get back, Li and Hardy are in the bath. Hardy’s wearing briefs, the way we’ve started to do when we’re bathin’ with Jack, since her natural curiosity can get awkward. Li’s sitting behind him in the big circular bath, with her long legs wrapped around him, stroking him more than washing him, but she still turns her face up to mine for a kiss when I kneel down next to the tub. Jack wriggles out of my arms and into the tub like a fish.

Hardy leans forward and catches Jack before she goes under, even though she swims like she’s got gills. The bathwater’s full of soap, which will sting our baby’s eyes. He plops our wet, sandy girl in his lap and blows a raspberry in her neck so she squeals.

“Stop, TooDaddy!” She bats him off, then dog-paddles around the bath. I ease myself in on the other side and crowd her to the middle, where we can all watch her.

Jack stands up in the middle of the tub before launching herself at me. I catch our slippery, sandy girl, turn her around in my lap and pour a handful of water over her matted curls. “You are one sandy worm, kid.”

“I fish, Mama,” she says proudly.

“Did you catch many fish, my darling?” Li asks as she continues to leisurely bathe Hardy. He settles back against her, wrapping his arms around her knees. He looks so content, I’d be tempted to throw fish guts at him, if I didn’t know what he’s been through lately.

“Two,” Jack says, holding up two fingers. Jack can count better than I can. I swear, Li began teachin’ her math while she was still in the womb.

“But we let ‘em go, didn’t we, Jack?”

Jack nods. “Don’t take too much,” she says, which is somethin’ I’ve been teachin’ her for almost as long. That’s a mistake man’s made on practically every planet he’s settled. We don’t need to make it on Furya.

“We already had breakfast and Chef sent down enough for a—” I stop myself before I say ‘fucking.’ “Platoon. We don’t need any more food.”

“We may have more mouths than just ours to feed this morning,” Li says.

I shake my head. While I was playin’ with Jack, I watched everyone leave their little habs, climb on their skimmers and head back to Zibon. Jack waved good-bye to all of ‘em. “They’ve all gone back.”

Hardy sighs. “Guess we have to go back, too.”

Li shoots me a meaningful look over Hardy’s shoulder and I nod. I got my own ‘to do’ list and it starts with puttin’ Ythane on the first ship headin’ off-planet.

Li strokes Hardy’s cheek with her wet hand. “We don’t _have_ to do anything, my heart. Would you rather stay away from Zibon for a while?”

He shrugs, but the look on his face says enough. He’d rather cut off his own testicles than go back an’ face Ythane and the gossip she’s spread.

Li wraps her arm across Hardy’s chest and holds him tight. “We can come back here whenever you wish. It is only a short skimmer ride away.”

Hardy grunts. “Or a long run.”

“Jack run,” our daughter offers as I lather up her gritty little head.

“You run all the way back to Zibon, big girl?” Hardy asks, grinning at our baby.

Jack glances at me, uncertain. “Jack run home?”

“Long way,” I tell her.

“Daddy run wit’ Jack?”

Daddy carry Jack is more like it. But there are worse ways to spend the day. “Sure. You comin’ with us?” I ask Hardy. He can share Jack-carrying duties if he is.

Hardy nods. Before Li has a chance to say anything, I catch her eye. “You’re not,” I tell her.

She lifts an eyebrow at me. “I run half that distance every day, my love.”

“I know you do.” She’s probably a better runner than either me or Hardy. But she’s not a killer anymore; we are. She runs along an enclosed, sandy beach that it took me months to clear an’ make safe. She’s not running through twenty klicks of jungle. Not when she’s four months pregnant and smells like the best, tastiest treat any predator’s ever eaten. “But someone’s gotta take all Jack’s toys back to Zibon. No way we can carry ‘em. I swear, was Nazya packin’ for a month or what?”

“Toys!” Our baby immediately cries, knowing when the important shit is on the line. She looks anxiously from me to her mother. “Mama, take Lizzy!”

“I won’t forget Lizzy, darling,” Li says. Hardy and me trade chuckles. Probably would be better if Lizzy stayed here. Jack’s gonna chew that poor thing’s tail off pretty soon. “And I will play baggage-handler. But don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing, my love.”

Keepin’ her safe is what I’m doin’. What I always do. Only thing I’ve ever really done right in my whole life. And I’m gonna keep on doing it, for as long as we’re both still breathin’.

“Give us two hours before you head out,” I tell her. It won’t take us two hours to run back, although Jack will slow us down if she wants to run, but I’m guessing she’ll get tired after a few minutes and get carried the rest of the way. What’ll take us two hours is the run plus a detour to a waterfall a klick off our route. There are some fancy little plants that grow by the waterfall. Li hasn’t had much success cultivatin’ them for her garden and she mentioned a few weeks ago that she wanted some more samples to try again. She thinks I’ve forgotten, but I haven’t. It’s just a little lower down on my ‘to do’ list than hers. “You can take a nap, without any . . . distractions.”

Li rolls her eyes at me but she smiles. “Very well, my love. I will be rested and ready for anything our evening might hold.”

Our evening’s gonna hold more fucking, just like this morning, and she knows it as well as I do. Don’t matter how sore she is, or how sore I’m gettin’. We’re gonna make sure Hardy don’t got any reason to doubt that he belongs with us.

Besides, this morning was the best sex we’ve had in a while. Maybe it’s askin’ too much for Hardy to be that vulnerable every time, but takin’ him apart this morning totally did it for me. And if he balks, Li don’t mind bein’ the one we fuck until she shatters.

 

Jack runs for about ten minutes, which is five minutes more than I expected, then she begins to wilt. Hardy and me take turns carrying her on our backs and shoulders. When I detour to the waterfall, Hardy smiles.

“Good thinking,” he says.

“I ain’t just a pretty face.”

He reaches out and palms my face and pushes me away. “Ugly mug.”

“Daddy not ugly, TooDaddy!” Jack immediately jumps to my defense. My baby girl.

Hardy takes her off my shoulders and plonks her on his. That leaves me free to climb around and dig Li’s stumpy little flowers outta the boles in trees where they like to hide. They are pretty, I’ll give them that. I wrap a half-dozen up with some dirt in my vest, tie off the ends and sling the armhole around my neck so I’ve got a carrier.

“I’ll carry those,” Hardy offers.

Nice try. “You’re carryin’ Jack.” I grin at him.

He grunts at my subterfuge, but doesn’t complain as we jog back to the Hab.

With the detour, it takes us a little longer than two hours to reach the Hab. Li’s waiting for us in our quarters and after expressin’ her delight at the floral surprise we’ve brought her, ushers us into the bath again.

“Pretty sure I already took a bath today,” I object. “Bathin’ twice a day’s bad for my hair.”

Li gives me a sweet smile. “Then it’s a good thing you don’t have any. You’re both sweaty and Chef’s announced a formal dinner to celebrate our return to Zibon, so you need another bath.”

Hardy and me groan in unison. It’s not that we don’t like Chef’s formal dinners. Food’s even better than usual. It’s that both of us have gotten so used to runnin’ around in next to nothing, that putting on real clothes feels like an imposition.

“I’m not wearing shoes. Don’t care what Chef says,” I tell Li.

“I’m sure he will not object to you attending barefoot, my love. However, take care that no one steps on your toes with their steel-toed boots.”

She’s got a point. Some of the Necros do still wear their big war boots. Don’t know why. The ‘bots keep the Hab so skinlessly clean there’s not even any dust to step on. Just habit, I guess.

I grumble but let her bathe me and Hardy. She sets out the flowers I’ve gathered in a little row on the edge of the bath so we can all admire ‘em. That’s Li all over. She leaves you in no doubt about how much she appreciates the things you do for her.

After the bath, as she’s towelling us off, I say to her, “Somethin’ I gotta do before dinner.”

She looks up into my eyes. “If it involves travel arrangements, my love, I’ve taken care of that while you were gathering my bromeliads.”

I skim her thoughts. She knew exactly what was I talkin’ about – getting rid of Ythane – an’ she’s already done somethin’ that involved speakin’ to Vaako, although I don’t get the details from my quick skim. I smile at her and brush her cheek with the back of my fingers. “A step ahead of me already, huh, wife?”

“Always, my love.”

We go our separate ways in our bedroom. Me and Hardy to the closet we share, where we have a short wrestling match over the pair of leather pants we both like best. I let him win, without bein’ too obvious about it, so he’s grinnin’ as he pulls on the pants. Li heads to her dressing-room with Nazya and Jack. Jack likes to have Li play with her hair while Nazya does Li’s. Jack’s baby-fine curls are too short to do much with, but Li puts little gemmed clips and bows in Jack’s hair while they’re gettin’ ready. It’s the only girly thing our girl really likes, so Li encourages it. We’re raising Zibon’s future leader, but that don’t mean she can’t be womanly, and enjoy bein’ a woman.

Li dresses for dinner, really dresses, in the way she don’t often now. In one of her long formal gowns, lace and silver filigree that cups her breasts and outlines her stomach and hips before falling over the soft pink skirt. No black. She’s not a Necro anymore. I love when she wears pink. Makes her look like one of her flowers. Her skin an’ lips flushed rosy. Eyes and hair so dark. Nazya piles Li’s hair on top of her head, pinning up the long strands with pearls and the carved hair sticks that used to be weapons, but Li hasn’t used in years. Hardy and me’ll take them all out later, so we can run our hands through her hair.

Hardy cares more about clothes than I do and makes more of an effort as we dress, puttin’ a tooled leather vest over a pale grey tunic. I take a black leather vest and our second-favorite leather pants off their hangers. No one cares what I wear, as long as I’m presentable. For all Hardy’s effort, Li’ll outshine him anyway.

As I’m fastening up the vest, Jack comes racing in, her hair full of jewels.

“Jack have party, Daddy, TooDaddy!” she tells us excitedly.

“Yeah?” Hardy picks her up and puts her on his hip. He catches a couple of the clips as they tumble outta her curls and carefully replaces them. “You comin’ to the big dinner with us? Have to mind your manners.”

Jack shakes her head at him, scattering clips, which I kneel to collect. “In Mama’s garden. Special party jus’ for Jack.”

Hardy rubs noses with her. “Special party, huh? Jack must have been a very good girl.”

“Egg-cellent girl.”

“Enjoy your party, egg-cellent girl,” I tell her, pocketin’ the clips. I’ll give them to Li when she’s ready. “You gonna wear a fancy dress like Mama?”

Jack’s wearing what she usually wears: a short tunic and knee-length pants. Warm enough inside Zibon’s cavelike cool; cool enough outside in Furya’s heat.

“Fancy dress!” Jack struggles in Hardy’s arms and he puts her down so she can race back to Li, shouting, “Jack want fancy dress!”

Hardy and me glance at each other, shake our heads and share a chuckle. An’ that’s when I feel like we’re back. A family again. For the first time since I heard Li screamin’.

I beckon Hardy with two fingers. He frowns – he won’t ever come to me the way Li does – but he comes close enough that I can grab his neck, drag him to me and hold him while I speak in his ear. “You’re a dick,” I tell him.

“Fuck off.” He starts to push away from me.

I hold him tighter. He ain’t goin’ nowhere. “But you’re our dick. There’ll be whispers tonight. Tomorrow. For a while t’come. Whatever anyone says, does, you just remember that.”

“That I’m a dick,” he says flatly. “Like I could forget—”

“No, that you’re _our_ dick.” I give him a shake and pull him close again. “Li’s and mine. An’ we ain’t lettin’ you go. No matter what anyone says or does.”

“Fuck off,” he says again, but his voice is soft now and I know he doesn’t mean it. He stands for a moment, just resting against me, then he puts his arms around my shoulders, same way I’m holding him, and drops his face into my neck. “Don’t care what anyone else says or does. ‘Long as you and Li know the truth. ‘Long as you believe me.”

I slide my hand up and ruffle his hair. “We believe you’re a dick.”

Hardy shakes his head, rubbing into my neck. “You are such a fucker.”

“Make a good pair then, you an’ me.”

He doesn’t say anything for a long while, letting me hold him. Give him strength to face the gauntlet of public opinion. He may say it doesn’t bother him, he don’t care, but I know better. No matter how much you shrug it off, it’s there. The looks, the whispers. I’ve faced them many times. After I raped Li. After Hardy nearly killed me for it. After I killed each of the five I had to kill to make sure the rest of Zibon lived free and un-fucked with. Each time, I walked the gauntlet with Li and Hardy beside me, and that’s what we’re gonna do for Hardy tonight. “We’re with you, every step of the way,” I tell him.

That’s too much for him. He pushes away from me and wipes his eyes. Doesn’t meet mine. “At some point tonight, you’re under me,” he grunts.

I smile at his back as he walks outta our closet. That’s better. We don’t tussle much for dominance, him and me. That’s ‘cause I like bein’ fucked more’n he does and ‘cause when he fucks me, he’s just as gentle as he is with Li. But we both know what it means to be the fuck-ee rather than the fuck-er, and maybe tonight, he ain’t gonna be so gentle. That makes my smile wider.

 

We pack Jack – in her fanciest little tunic and pants, with a couple of jewelled clips still clinging to her curls – off with Nazya to enjoy her party, which Li tells me is a picnic for all the kids in her garden. A meal without kids sounds nice for a change, and I draw her aside for a kiss to let her know I appreciate it. Then we head up to the dining hall. We’ve had to move it from its original location mid-Hab to the top of the Hab in order to accommodate everyone who’s joined us. We don’t all usually eat at once, only on nights like this when Chef announces a formal meal, but the new dining hall can seat everyone when we do.

There’s barely anyone in the hall when we arrive, and when I glance at Li’s face, and then into her mind, I realize this is by design. She didn’t want Hardy to walk the gauntlet. There’ll still be stares, and whispers, but not from every side, and not all at once. And although Li’s submissive by nature, she’s plenty dominant when it comes to politics. She wants everyone to see us in our usual places at the head table – together, united, the Lord and Lady Marshal and our Warden – when they enter.

Chef bustles out from the galley to greet Li before we even have a chance to sit down. He starts talkin’ about the feast preparations, but we both know he’s just makin’ sure she’s okay and has eaten well while we’ve been away. He runs his hand over her slightly rounded stomach. As far as I know, he’s the only man other’n me and Hardy that Li lets touch her tummy. “No more sickness?” he asks.

“No, not for days,” Li reassures him.

“I told you my white buns would work. You just had to give them time. I’ve made you some for tonight, too.”

Li thanks him with a kiss on the cheek. She likes him too much to tell him that she had morning sickness through her first trimester with Jack and that it went away on its own in the fourth month, just like this time. She also really likes his white buns.

Vaako arrives while Li’s talkin’ to Chef. He’s schooled his expression by the time he reaches our table, but I see his surprise when he first enters the hall and sees us standin’ together. I lift an eyebrow at him – I fuckin’ told him we were workin’ it out and he should keep his nose out. He gives me a nod. The woman on his arm’s more subtle. She curtseys to me, but when Li finishes with Chef, Halle opens her arms to Li and gives her a hug. “I would have called,” she tells Li. “But I heard you didn’t want to be disturbed.”

Li gives Halle a warm smile. I didn’t think they were that close – Li gravitates towards more outgoin’ types like Gvenne and Elkie – but there’s nothin’ like adversity to create a little solidarity among the sisters. “Would you come to tea tomorrow?” Li asks her.

“I’d be delighted,” Halle says.

And that pretty much tells me how it’s gonna go. No one’s gonna snub Li. She may not be universally liked – Vaako’s still fucking scowlin’ at her – but no one’s stupid enough to go against her, either.

And that’s the way it goes. There’s barely any gauntlet for Hardy to walk. There are a couple of hard looks aimed his way from the most die-hard of Li’s fan club as they arrive and take their seats. Tykkas gives Hardy a glare that should melt him right down to his bare soles when he comes in with Zetty on his arm. But that’s barely a slap compared to some of the gauntlets I’ve faced.

Until Ythane walks in.

She’s late, comin’ through the door with the last few stragglers. Everyone else is sittin’ down, enjoying the first course: crispy parcels filled with creeper meat and the spicy native beans we’ve come to call _furies_. I hear Hardy grunt like he’s been gut-punched when he sees Ythane. I turn my head to look a question at Li, but she’s already rising off our bench.

She stands and the whole hall falls silent. I expect Li to order Ythane out. Instead, her clear voice rings out one word, “Ythane.”

The Furyan girl freezes. The last few stragglers comin’ through the doors move towards empty seats, leavin’ Ythane standing alone in the doorway, twelve meters from our table. She looks uncertain for a moment, shifting her weight from foot to foot. Then she decides on arrogance, stickin’ her hip out and tossing back her hair as she answers. “Yes?”

Beside me, Li shifts.

Ythane’s head snaps back. Twin, carved spikes sprout from her eyes. She begins to sag, her knees giving way. Then her body arcs, every joint stiffening, rising up onto her toes. Black ash swirls out of the spikes, wreathing her head, as a hair-raising howl splits the silence. Ythane screams, and the ash pours down her throat, sucking the hazy double-image of her soul that rises from her skin, down into darkness.

The body hits the floor with a thud.

The Necros don’t scream. Most don’t even flinch. They’re professional soldiers. Death is what they do. There’s some shuffling and a few muffled gasps from other refugees, but they’re quickly silenced.

Liaden speaks into that silence. “I accept your challenge,” she says coolly.

She holds out her hand. With a tearing noise, the long pins in Ythane’s eyes fly in bloody arcs back into Li’s grip. Fuck, I didn’t know she could do that.

Li cleans the pins on her napkin before setting them back in her hair. Wipes her hands before putting one hand on my shoulder and one hand on Hardy’s. “I am the Lady Marshal,” she says. “This is my family. Fuck with us at your peril.”

Faz stands and salutes first, but Tykkas and many others are only a breath behind him.

Li lifts her chin and takes their deference like a queen. She’s got a master poker face, my wife. Inside, underneath, she’s shakin’. She hasn’t killed in years. She’s terrified our people’ll turn on her for killin’ a pretty, young girl whose only real crime was bein’ ignorant, selfish and arrogant. But she don’t let any of that show.

I wait until the legionnaires start sittin’ down before I stand, take Li in my arms and kiss her. She’s not lettin’ anything show, but I can feel her tremblin’. “Proud of you, wife.”

“Thank you, husband.”

I release her and turn her to Hardy. He’s up on her other side. He’s lookin’ uncertain, but I don’t think it’s about Ythane’s death. When Li turns to him, he holds out his hands. She takes them, squeezes them, smiles gently at him. He folds her real slow into his chest and whispers to her, words I hear in her mind.

“You killed for me.”

She nods. “I should have fought for you from the start, my heart. Forgive me.”

“Nothing to forgive.” He kisses her, then releases her and pushes back our three-seater bench. Goes down onto one knee into the space he’s created. He takes Li’s hands again. Looks up at her with those big brown eyes, full of light now. “Marry me,” he says.

I can’t see Li’s face, but I can feel her heart catch fire. It burns so bright in her chest, it’s like a supernova. I hadn’t realized how much she wanted him to ask. How much it hurt her when he never did. I’m in her mind all the time, but I never saw it. Or maybe she hid it, the way she’s hid her worst memories, the way she hid her plan for tonight. Now I see how she arranged everythin’. Chef givin’ a formal dinner so she had an excuse to wear her weapons. Gettin’ rid of the kids for the night. Havin’ us arrive early so she’d get the drop on Ythane. All so she could meet Ythane’s challenge.

I probably should be mad at her. I don’t like her puttin’ herself at risk any more than I like her hidin’ shit from me. But I’m not. Maybe better’n anyone, I understand what it means to be Lady Marshal. It means you don’t get to run away.

I put my hand on her back, between her shoulder-blades, and stroke the red angel’s wing mark on her skin, visible through the silver and lace of her dress, with my thumb. Li knows I’ll support her in anythin’ she does, any decision she makes. It don’t hurt to remind everyone else, too.

With my hand supporting her, she says, simply, “Yes.”

From my far side, I hear Vaako huff. “I knew it. I knew she’d find some way to ruin my damn wedding.”

I chuckle. He is such a _prima donna_.

[The End]


End file.
